The moderating role of demographic characteristics between green marketing mix of eco-friendly products and customer switching behaviour: a case of the Egyptian automobile market

Purpose – There is an escalating need for further studies to comprehend the consumer's change in behaviour towards eco-friendly automotive products for its growing trend in the emerging markets. Introducing environmentally friendly cars is, therefore one of the industrial measures to resolve this challenge by enabling at minimum, some proportionate decrease in world gas-emissions. So, governments and global vehicle manufacturers are dedicated to shifting Egyptian consumer behaviour in the vehicle sector, to search for ways to boost green cars’ usage, causing a major growth in the global market of electric vehicles. That required to investigate the factors influencing Egypt's green vehicle purchasing intent. The green marketing mix is a tactic used by several businesses in varied industries to promote purchasing of green goods. A variety of researches have examined the green marketing mix strategies and its relationship with customer behaviour. In the present situation, customers are searching for well-known premium products that suit their needs. Though, people respect the environment and believe in preserving it, and are mindful of the environmental issues, their purchase is not necessarily relying on that base. Given this, the purpose of the study is to focus on the green marketing mix variables that influence the Egyptian customers’ green purchasing behaviour, when buying automotive products.
More precisely, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact of the green marketing mix on customer switching behaviour towards eco-friendly cars. Also, the moderating effect of demographic variables has been applied to the framework model.
Design/methodology/approach – the research design is both qualitative and quantitative, where two data types were used: Secondary Data and Primary Data. For a theoretic overview, secondary data were gathered from numerous blogs and academic articles concerned with topics connected to the research question. The primary data required to meet the study goals were obtained using the E-Questionnaire tool presented by Google forms for applying the questionnaire via the Internet and filling it out by various respondents. A sum of 305 eligible responses has been received. Hypotheses were evaluated by the Route Analysis Approach using the Amos Ver.18 software. The research utilized one of the regression tools, the Structural Equations Modelling (SEM) technique in the Route Analysis software, using the Maximum Likelihood Estimates (MLE) approach in the AMOS program.  Thus, the moderating role of demographic variables on the interaction between the green marketing mix strategies and consumer switching behaviour toward eco-friendly cars could be tested.
Findings – The findings showed that green marketing mix had a substantial positive effect on the consumer's switching behaviour towards eco-friendly automotive products. Moreover, it has been observed that different genders, ages, levels of education, and marital statuses of Egyptian consumers affected their attitude regarding eco-friendly automobile products, while the level of income did not influence it.
Originality/value – The research aims at filling the substantial gap regarding Egyptian consumers buying behaviour for green automotive products.  This paper remains one of the few research projects designed to resolve numerous green marketing mix issues that affect buying behaviour for eco-friendly automotive products in developing countries, like Egypt. It will, however, serve as a guide for eco-friendly automobile manufacturing firms to consider the green marketing mix variables that may affect consumer attitudes towards eco-friendly vehicles in related contexts. Results suggest a need for policymakers and practitioners to introduce effective strategies for encouraging the population to adopt green vehicles, thus increasing the acceptance rate of pro-environmental automobiles. Besides, this study has used the power of the Path Analysis technique and the SEM method applied by the Amos software to deal with higher-order structures, enabling us to create and validate a suitable methodology that would be valuable for practitioners.