The role of social identity in predicting customer's choice of non-traditional products and services

The present study aims at exploring the importance of social identification with consumers’ group in predicting the intention to buy, within a modified version of the Theory of Self-Regulation (Bagozzi, 1992; Bagozzi & Edwards, 1998). The research involved 1718 customers of non-traditional products and services, which are organic food (N=300), phytotherapy (N=367), homeopathy (N=250), oriental medicine (N=420), and musicotherapy (N=381), coming from all around Italy. For each service/product, the following variables were measured: 1. Affective attitude; 2. Evaluative attitude; 3. Perceived Behavioural Control; 4. Subjective Norms; 5. Behaviour frequency (mean= 4.13 times/month); 6. Behaviour recency (39 times/year); 7. Desire to buy 8; Intention to buy; 9. Social Identity. We regressed these TSR’s components on the Intention to Buy. Results indicated that Organic food’s customers are guided by Desire to buy, Perceived Behavioral Control and Behavior Recency, whereas Desire to buy and Behavior Recency explain Musicotherapy choice. Most importantly, in three areas out of five, Social Identity account for a significant part of variance of the Intention to buy variable. In these three services, the only other significant predictor is Desire to buy. The direction in which Social Identity predicts the Intention to buy is positive, except for oriental medicine, so that for phytotherapy and homeopathy a high sense of Social Identity predicts a high Intention to buy. On the contrary, it is reasonable to hypothesize that eastern medicine’s customers feels the need to preserve their own, western, identity.