THE ROLE OF HEALTH AWARENESS IN SHAPING CONSUMERS’ TRUST AND PURCHASE INTENTION TOWARD ONLINE ORGANIC FOOD: EVIDENCE FROM PAKISTAN

The growth of online food stores has greatly influenced the consumer buying pattern especially in the organic food product market. The paper explores the connection between health awareness and the intention to buy organic food online with reference to trust and confidence in health-related information. The collected data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 100 consumers of Pakistan and analyzed using SPSS. The relationships between health awareness and trust in online organic food, confidence in digital information, and purchase intention were analyzed using descriptive statistics, normality tests, correlation analysis, multiple regression, and principal component analysis. The results indicate a strong statistically significant positive correlation between health awareness and online organic food purchase intention. The regression analysis proves the hypothesis that the effect of health-related perceptions, as a bloc, has a strong effect on purchase intention. Moreover, principal component analysis reveals a health-oriented factor that significantly influences the variance with a preponderance implying that health awareness, trust and intention are interrelated in the form of an integrated thinking system. The research is an addition to the existing body of knowledge on online food consumption because it reveals how health awareness is a key influencer of online organic food buying behavior.