Country of Origin, Price Sensitivity and Customer Involvement as New Antidotes to Purchase Intention: Evidence from Mobile Phone SME’s

Abstract

This study has observed the purchase intention of mobile phones of SME’s owners in Pakistan. The theoretical framework of this examine is grounded on the theory of planned behavior model (TPB) with an addition of country of origin (COO), price sensitivity (PS) and customer involvement (CI) as moderator. Data was collected from 370 mobile phone SME’s owners in Pakistan. A sample size of 370 SME’s was selected by following simple random sampling technique with replacement from a population list of 10,794 SME’s. The quantitative data was analyzed by applying PLS- SEM technique using a longfamiliar research analysis software Smart PLS 3.0. The findings suggested that attitude and perceived behavioral control (PBC) has a substantial relationship along with purchase intention (PI) except subjective norm (SN). Moreover, COO, PS and CI moderate the relationship between purchase intention and its most of the antecedents used in the present study. However, moderation of PS was not proved between the relationships of (1) PBC and PI, and (2) attitude and PI. Similarly, moderation of CI was found insignificant between the relationship of perceived behavioral control and purchase intention. Moreover, present study is the first to instigate the country of origin, price sensitivity and customer involvement relationships with different variables to enhance the purchase intention of mobile phone brands from the point of view of SME’s owners of Pakistan.