Influence of Age on Purchase Intention of Eco-Friendly Products: Evidence from Hyderabad, Sindh

As the global warming and pollution is increasing day by day, it is necessary to take active steps to overcome this. In this study age is considered an important variable in order to predict the purchase intention towards eco-friendly products in Hyderabad, Sindh. Primary data has been collected by 172 respondents through adopted questionnaires. The respondents were the consumers located in different areas of Hyderabad, Sindh. Two different demographic profiles (age and level of income) were taken to determine its influence on intention to purchase eco-friendly products. The findings of this study revealed that age is found to have significant impact on purchase intention. However, it has been found out that level of income doesn’t have significant association with purchase intention. The results of this study can helps marketer to make strategies for eco-friendly products and differentiate it from traditional products which are harmful for the environment.


INTRODUCTION
Environment products will have positive impact on health of individuals. From the starting of 1980s there have been a lot of environmental problems such as climate crises. Pollution is mostly related to industrial and the activities in industry due to which the health of people is affected. As a result, there is increase in the environmental problems which are considered by modernized world. Nowadays, the consumers are demanding the eco-friednlty products for their daily use products (Yakup and Sevil, 2011). Tsay (2009), firms and companies along with government are concerned about the environment issues faced by the world, and therefore, they are making marketing strategies that involve welfare of the environment. Eco friendly products are considered as recyclable, less polluted and can used to save resources. Therefore, traditional products create more worst environmental conditions than eco-friendly products. Environment friendly products are developed to decrease the usage of non-renewable resources. This act will help in avoiding poisonous materials and increases the usage of renewable resources throughout its whole life (Chen, 2001).
When all the factors coming from products and consumers are integrated, the purchase intensions are created. When the demand of a consumers is fulfilled then process of selection and purchasing of the products is finalized. The consumers prefer those products in their positive attitude, when they are in need of it and does not have intention to prefer it when they don't like that product (Zheng and Kin, 2013). The recent studies show that the researchers are more focused on determining the effects of demographic profiles (age and level of income) on the purchased intention (Vishal, 2017). The consumer with different demographic profiles are considered to have different purchased intentions due to which it has been determined that demographic variables (age and level of income) can effect purchased intentions (Yang et al., 2011). Among all the demographic factor, age is important variable that impacts the buying behavior and purchased intention of consumer. It has been noticed that old people are more involved in the activities of recycling and reading then the young generation (Johson et al., 2004). Also according to the (Johson et al., 2004) the age is also helpful determining the environment beliefs of the person.
Level of income plays a crucial role by creating positive impact on the sensitivity of the environment. It has been found out that low income consumers have less intentions to buy eco-friendly products then high income consumers (Johson et.al., 2004). But no significant effect in association of income with purchased intention is determined (laroche et al., 2001).

Age of The Consumer and Purchase Intention
Madahi and Sukani (2012), significant association of demographic profiles on purchase intention to purchase environmental products in Malaysia. A study is used to conclude the association of effect of age on green purchase intention. Questionnaires were being used to carry out qualitative method. The sample size was 350 which was been selected from different universities and the targeted population were senior and junior students based on different ages. Findings of this study revealed that the purchase intention decreases with the increase of age and there is significant association of the purchase intention with the young consumers as they do not hesitate in experiencing new things. The recommendation can be concluded that the marketers and businessmen should focus on gaining more information and understanding about the behavior patterns of young consumers as they are more significantly associated with purchase purpose. Rahim et al., (2017) the influence of demographic variables on the buying objective in Malaysia. The method of the study was descriptive which describes the characteristics of the market. The sample size was 200 respondents which were been surveyed through online format like google docs and it was been shared in different social sites like twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and etc. The results were being found out through SPSS. The result of ANOVA test shows that here is no important modification between both variables such as the ages of the consumers. Marketers and producers of ecofriendly products are recommended to focus on the potential market segment. Omar et al., (2017) the important effect of demographic factors on the purchase intention in the area of Klang valley. The method used for the study was to collect primary data with the help of questionnaires asked from 150 respondents. According to the result, age has a significant association with the purchase intention. This research is helpful for those marketers who are willing to invest in the organic foods.
H1: Age of consumers has a significant link through purchase intention of eco-friendly products in Hyderabad, Sindh. Rahim et al., (2017), weighty influence of demographic factors on green obtaining objective in Malaysia. In this research, primary date has been collected with the help of descriptive method. There were 200 respondents as sample size for this research. According to the result, there is no significant impact of independent variables like income on dependent variable purchase intention. It is recommended that marketers should focus on the potential market segments that are shown through the result of this research.

Income of Consumer and Purchase Intention
Punjakinaporn and Techakittiroj (2015), the effect of demographic variables on the acquisition aim in Bangkok. In this study, collection of primary data is done through questionnaires. The Thais in Bangkok were selected as 400 target respondents. The result of this study reveals that the factors for instance income has no key influence on the procurement purpose. Through this result, producers and marketers are suggested to create marketing strategies to increase sales and promotions of it. Imelia and Ruswanti (2017), the effect of the factors towards buying goal of Indonesia. The method which has been obtained for this study is questionnaires involving 300 respondents to collect primary data. In this study, among two frameworks which has been used, one is about the impact of demographics such as income on the purchase intention. The conclusions of the study showed that there is important effect of income on the purchase intention. Through this study, it has been suggested that the marketers should utilize these independent variables such as income to create marketing strategies for the product.
H2: Income of consumers has a substantial relationship with purchase intention of eco-friendly products in Hyderabad, Pakistan.

Data Source
The data source of the study is 'Primary', which involves the collection of research data directly from the respondents. In other words, the primary source is the direct data source related to the subject or problem. Here, data will be collected directly from the participants using a structured adopted questionnaire based on demographics of customers in association with purchase intention for eco-friendly products.

Population of the Study
The population of a research study is participants or the respondents of the study that possess similar characteristics or traits (Weiss, 2012). As the aim of the study is to explain the association of the demographics of customers with purchase intention for eco-friendly products in Hyderabad Sindh province of Pakistan, therefore the population of the study consists of citizens of Hyderabad city.

Sampling Strategy
In a primary research, sampling is an important component, which determines the number of respondents participating in the research study. Due to several constraints, including time, geographic and finance, it is important for a study to select a subset of the population. In this research convenience sampling strategy was applied.

SAMPLE SIZE
According to Roscoe (1975), the rule of thumb for selection of sample size from population is each item should have at least 10 respondents. In this research number of research items in questionnaire are 16, so sample would be for this research is 16*10= 160. But, in order to get more reliable results in this study authors have taken 172 respondents. The response rate was 94%.

RESEARCH INSTRUMENT
The data source of the study is primary, and therefore data will be collected directly from the research participants with the help of 5point Likert scale Questionnaire. Likert scale is measured as follows: 1-Strongly Disagree 2-Disagree 3-Neutral 4-Agree 5-Strongly Agree Research instrument of the study is adapted from a many sources, the questionnaires were various studies.  Table 3 shows the sample distribution according to age and income. The age group which lies between 20 and 29 were our major respondents. 45.7 percent of our respondents were of 20 to 29, 24.7 percent were of less than 20 years and 11.7 percent were of 40 to 49 years. Most of our respondents were simultaneous consumption which was dependent on other's income. Table 4 shows reliability statistics, the value of Cronbach's Alpha is used for final decision about reliability of studied data. On the basis, we can measure the level of reliability in terms of poor or good. In our case Cronbach's alpha value of purchase intention is 0.79 or 79%. It can be concluded that our variable is reliable for further analysis.

Hypothesis Testing
We have taken age and income as our demographic profile. To find out the difference between these factors, we have used ANOVA test. The Table 5 shows the relationship of age and income of consumer with purchase intention of eco-friendly products. You can see in the above table, the difference between age of the consumers and purchase intention of eco-friendly product is significant as the Pvalue is less than 0.05. However, the income of consumer in our study is found to have insignificant impact with our dependent variable green purchase intention.

Conclusion
The aim of this research is to indicate the association of age and income of consumer with purchase intention for eco-friendly products in Hyderabad, Sindh. In the research, ANOVA and reliability test were run for concluding the findings. Through the findings of the research, it has been found out that there is a significant association of age of consumer with purchase intention of eco-friendly products. However, there is no significant association of income with purchase intention as the eco-friendly product are favored by the consumer in Hyderabad, Sindh of all level of income.

Limitation of Study
Our study is limited to Hyderabad, Sindh. There are many demographic factors like (education, occupation, and standard of living) which are not included in our study because of the limitation of time. Like in this research, we had found out that education plays a vital role determining the purchase intention of eco-friendly products but didn't included it our research.

Recommendations
Eco-friendly products have vast categories like paper bags, recycling plastic rugs which can be used in industries like textile and food industry. Marketer should make strategies related by the usage of eco-friendly products as consumer of different level of income in Hyderabad has awareness about it and prefer it. The future researchers should be motivated to research about the demographic factors like: education, occupation and standard of living which influence the purchase intention of eco-friendly product. This research encourages the marketer to invest their money on the improvements and marketing of eco-friendly products. The important task is to create the awareness of our consumer to differentiate eco-friendly products from products which are harmful to our environment.