GREEN BEAUTY PRODUCT LOYALTY: A MODEL VALIDATION

The beauty product industry is one with a lucrative forecast, as this industry had a global revenue of approximately 571.1 billion US dollars in 2022, expected to grow by 3.8 percent annually. Where natural or green beauty products contributed 37 billion US dollars to the total value of the beauty product industry in that specific year. This may be due to consumers increasingly becoming aware of the effect their lifestyle and behaviour have on the environment. Accordingly, they are more conscious about purchasing environmentally friendly and ethically sourced products. This is especially true regarding beauty products, as this market has been experiencing substantial growth in the green sphere. Consequently, competition in the green beauty product industry is increasing significantly, highlighting the importance for retailers in this industry to retain consumers by increasing product loyalty. To increase product loyalty for any product, a thorough understanding of the factors that might affect consumers’ loyalty towards the specific product is needed. To this end, a model that can be used to measure green beauty product loyalty will assist marketing academics and practitioners, especially within the green beauty product industry. As such, this study focused on validating a green beauty product loyalty model within the South African context. A descriptive research design was followed, collecting data from a sample of 500 participants employing a computer-administered survey. The factors included in the specified measurement model comprised green beauty product loyalty, quality perception, price perception and green trust. The data was analysed using collinearity diagnostics, confirmatory factor analysis, nomological, convergent and discriminant validity analysis, internal-consistency and composite reliability analysis and model fit indices. The results conclude that green beauty product loyalty is a four-factor model, exhibiting internal consistency reliability, as well as composite reliability, together with construct, convergent and discriminant validity, presenting no multi-collinearity issues and good model fit indices. Consequently, this empirically-validated model serves as a good foundation for marketing academics and practitioners in understanding the factors influencing consumers’ product loyalty when it comes to green beauty products.