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intention behavior
W.I. Wan-Ruzanna, A. Zaileen-Elina & A. Roslina
Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia
W.I. Wan-Mahirah
Politeknik Ibrahim Sultan, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: This present study focuses on examining the blog trustworthiness and purchase intention
behavior of food bloggers. This study utilized self-administered questionnaire on the reader of food blog
www.friedchilies.com. The data was successfully gathered from a sample of 324 respondents, yielding
almost 95 percent response rate. The data were analyzed using inferential statistic to confirm the proposed
hypothesis, simultaneously answering the research questions. The findings revealed that blog trustworthi-
ness is closely related to the purchase intention behavior. In other word, food blog besides others can
be considered as one of the effective marketing tools for restaurants operators to promote, attract their
potential customers and retain the existing ones.
Keywords
:
Food blog, trustworthiness, purchase intention behavior
1 INTRODUCTION
impact towards the customer purchase intention
behaviour. The customer who reads the food blog
usually gets influenced by the pictures and explana-
tion posted which mostly are attractive and capture
the attention of the readers. Most positive review
posted on a particular restaurant the better chances
of readers purchase intention or otherwise.
As far as this study is concerned, there are over
30 popular food blogs are available in Malaysia
that are used as a medium for sharing about the
food matters and restaurants. The www.friedchil-
lies.com is becoming one of the most famous food
websites. The Google Analytics Malaysia revealed
that Friedchillies received around 1.8 million view-
ers per month thus claimed as the most visited
food blog in Malaysia. In fact, Friedchillies has
expanded their brand by introducing their own
food channel through a joint-venture with TM's
HyppTV. The food review provided on the Fried-
chillies blog in fact is used as a guideline to all food
lovers not only for local people but also by the
international tourists.
Despites this, the question arises whether all
the information shared through online blogs can
be trusted and whether the information provided
would have significant impacts towards customer
purchase intention? The objective of this study is
thus to analyze the effect of blog trustworthiness
on readers purchase intention behavior by the
hypothesis that:
Information technology and foodservice are two
different industries which might seem unrelated,
but nowadays it almost becomes a backbone of
one to another. The modernization of today's era
however makes it possible to merge these two dif-
ferent industries. Through the information tech-
nology, marketing of the foodservice establishment
including restaurants can widely be done widely
without any barriers. Out of many, social media is
one of the latest means of disseminating informa-
tion, including food information on any types of
restaurant. In line with this, food review through
different forms of media such as television, news-
paper articles, magazines, websites and blogs are
used to help the seekers or customers make a better
choice in their food selection. According to (Cox &
Blake, 2011) websites or blogs no doubt is one of
the important sources of information seekers now-
adays. Though the main idea of having a blog is
for '
blogger to express their feelings, voice, opinions
and share experiences and idea
(Herring, Scheidt,
Wright & Bonus, 2005) it is also used as a form of
marketing and promotion by the food providers.
Besides is sharing recipes, techniques of cook-
ing food blogs also a review on food and restau-
rant and inside information on the locations, type
of food served, pricing and best-selling menus. The
increasing number of food blogs seems to give an
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