Abstract:
Purchase Intention (PI) is simply a strategy to purchase a particular good or service in the near future. Manufactures strive to manufacture and position their products in a highly competitive market due to the purchasing intention of consumers. Motorcycle market in Sri Lanka is one of the most competitive marketplaces in South Asian neighborhood. This will provide guidelines for motorcycle manufacturers to meet the customer needs, wants and expectations while being the first local empirical evidence on urban consumers‘ purchase intention of motorcycles. PI of consumers depend on various factors. This study aims to explore the factors affecting the PI of urban consumers towards motorcycles. Out of the 384 subjects: urban and rural, 168 urban consumers were considered to acquire the required data through a structured questionnaire and the sampling methods were simple random sampling and multistage cluster sampling. Since, the Indian brands have recorded the highest motorcycle population in Sri Lanka, four Indian motorcycle brands: Bajaj, Hero, TVS and Honda were used. Meanwhile, Dehiwala West GN division which has a rapid industrialization and urbanization was selected out of the municipal councils of Colombo district from the Western province with the highest motorcycle population. The exploratory factor analysis reduced the total system into 10 latent factors which affect urban consumers‘ PI of motorcycles: comparability, knowledge, awareness, need fulfillment and availability, quality customer service, attractiveness, quality component, trusted performance, fair price, and variability. Furthermore, the results confirmed that each of the individual latent factors were significantly positive correlated (p < 0.5) with PI. Finally, the results of the multiple linear regression analysis revealed three factors: trusted performance, knowledge and awareness significantly impact on PI of motorcycle consumers in urban area. Meanwhile, the study proved that the components and customer service in the motorcycle industry should be at their highest quality while the manufacturers concern on high fuel efficiency for urban consumers to get benefits over the huge traffic congestion. The study can be expanded to capture PI of various brands from the second and third highest manufacturing countries in Sri Lanka: China and Japan.
