Purchasing Intentions of Young Thai Male towards Men‟s Skin Care Products

Abstract: Title: Purchasing Intentions of Young Thai Male towards Men's Skin Care Products Problem: Men concern more about their image than ever before. This behavior is becoming a new trend in cosmetic market. Moreover, Thailand is one of the fast growing cosmetics industry, particularly male skin care market within countries in Asia-Pacific region. However, most of the literatures have just studied on women cosmetic products. There are a few studies within male cosmetic market, despite the demands of cosmetic products are increasing among men as well as women. Purpose: This study aims to discuss the relationships between dimension of brand equity, overall brand equity, brand preference and purchase intention of men‟s skin care products among young Thai male in Bangkok. The study measures the equity of brand and identifies the impact of brand equity on brand preference and purchase intentions. Research Question: How does brand equity associate with purchasing intention of young Thai male towards skin care products? Method: Quantitative research method interpreted by the authors is applied in this research. A questionnaire-based survey is used as a tool to collect the data and the specific variables used in this paper: the dimension of brand equity, overall brand equity, brand preference, and purchase intention. Both primary and secondary types of data collection were used for this research. Conclusion: The results reveal that each dimension of brand equity, which consists of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand association, and perceive quality have a significant impact on overall brand equity. However, brand loyalty and perceive quality have a bigger impact on brand equity than brand association and brand awareness. The impact of brand equity in itsIIconsequences supported the direct positive impact on brand preference and purchase intention. This predicate that brands with higher levels of brand equity would generate higher levels of customer brand preference. Moreover, the customers, who have high level of brand preference indicated that they have more willingness to continually purchase the specific men‟s skin care brand and this can build higher purchase intention. Last but not least, this current research also figure out that using celebrity may not be the most effective strategy to stimulate consumer purchasing intentions toward men‟s skin care product among young Thai males in Bangkok.