The influence of unethical marketing practices on consumers’ buying behaviours among Malaysian tertiary students

An unethical brand of marketing is a type of marketing strategy that distorts or exaggerates the truth of products offer, closely followed by using unrealistic, altered images or unverified claims to confuse and mislead potential consumers. Nowadays, it has become an integral component of online shopping for most consumers as many companies adopted unprincipled and dishonourable practices in an effort to maintain a profitable relationship with their targeted consumers. The purpose of this study is to determine the influence of unethical marketing practices on consumers’ buying behaviours among tertiary students from a local university located in north of Malaysia. Four independent variables on consumers’ buying behaviours were tested, namely, False Advertisement, Bait Advertisement, Spamming, and Psychoactive Advertisement. A total of 317 questionnaires were collected from the target group, employing a quantitative method of collecting data. Data were analysed using SPSS (version 22). Based on Pearson’s correlation analysis, showed that there was a moderately positive relationship between consumers’ buying behaviours and all of the unethical marketing practices named above. The outcomes revealed a positive and moderate relationship between Consumers’ Buying Behaviours and False Advertisement (r=0.458); Bait Advertisement (r=0.514); Spamming (0.564); and Psychoactive Advertisement (r=0.606). Next, based on the multiple regression analysis, the accepted hypotheses included significant influences of False Advertisement (β=0.203, t=4.038, p=0.000), Spamming (β=0.256, t=4.768, p=0.000) and Psychoactive Advertisement (β=0.413, t=0.413, p=0.000) on Consumers’ Buying Behaviours. Nevertheless, the only hypothesis rejected in this study was Bait Advertisement (β=0.117, t=2.251, p=0.025) which showed no significant influence on Consumers’ Buying Behaviours among the students in this university.