Understanding Indonesian Consumer Preference towards Packaging Products Buying Decision through Eco-Friendly Product Attributes

The study aims to reveal Indonesian consumers’ preferences towards packaging products, such as a carrier bag and water bottle. It could be done by analysing the consumers’ valuation of product attributes. Consumers are asked to choose a bundle of product attributes, which they value to have the highest utility. In addition, this study applies a qualitative method of in-depth interview and a quantitative method by distributing a questionnaire with a discrete choice experiment. There are five eco-friendly product attributes for packaging product, functional performance and quality, economic costs, environmentally friendly feature, hedonic or emotional appeal and convenient. Given the result for a carrier bag, the product attributes which have a significant influence in determining preferences are functional performance and quality, economic costs, environmentally friendly feature, and convenient. However, for a water bottle, only functional performance and quality does not become statistically significant towards consumer preferences. Aside from that, the level of education and level of income does not have any significant effect on consumer choices towards both packaging products. This research also analyses the level of awareness and interest of Indonesian consumers towards eco-friendly packaging products through a Likert scale and interview. From the result of the study, it is found that most of Indonesia customer have a high awareness of the environment and interest in purchasing packaging products. The purpose of the study is to give insights for manufacturers for creating alternative products to replace the use of single-use plastics packaging products that are proven to be harmful to the environment. At the end of this research, directions for further research are provided in order to continue the development of the study in this area.