Using the theory of planned behavior to explore consumer perception toward dietary supplements to treat diabetes
Abstract
As dietary supplement market has been continuously growing nowadays, understanding consumer behaviors and motivations is very crucial. In Vietnam, supplement users contain not only healthy individuals who want to maintain and improve their own health, but also patients who are suffering from chronic diseases. Among supplements supporting disease treatment and prevention, diabetic supplements have become more and more widespread, due to the increasing diabetes rates. This research is going to focus on elderly patients who have type 2 diabetes and live in three provinces of Southeast Vietnam: Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Vung Tau. Both supplement users and non-users were recruited to evaluate the differences, as well as to identify factors that might influence their purchasing intention. The Theory of Planned Behaviors were utilized to determine intention‟s predictors regarding supplement usage. As using quantitative methods, questionnaires are distributed in hospitals and medical centers of the three selected provinces. After all, it is demonstrated that consumers‟ intention were determined by the perceived benefits of supplements, subjective norms, purchase ability, and finally is the perceived health value (the level of impact is from the strongest to the weakest, respectively). This finding was consistent with the TPB, in which intention was predicted by attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Besides, in comparison with the current users, those who do not use diabetic supplements have lower confidence and sympathy for the supplements‟ benefits, especially they have a big concern that supplements may cause unpleasant side-effects. Moreover, non-users are shown to have limited knowledge, affordability and relatively lower perceived health value. In order to stimulate consumption and promote consumers‟ positive attitudes towards these products in a long term, supplement manufacturers and marketers should embrace transparency in communication and sales methods, as well as product quality, while continuing raising consumer awareness about supplement‟s roles in supporting disease treatment and prevention.