Thai Gen Z buy cruelty-free out of values — but the strongest predictor of purchase is loyalty, and loyalty falls away when the price rises

What do Thai Gen Z consumers value in cruelty-free products, how do they feel about the marketing communication of those brands, and what actually predicts an intention to buy?

An online survey of 400 Thai respondents aged 18 to 26 who were aware of cruelty-free brands, collected by quota sampling (84.7% women, 11.35% men, 4.00% other genders). Four constructs were measured on five-point Likert scales — values, attitudes toward integrated marketing communication tools, brand loyalty and purchase intention — with an overall reliability of .93. Analysis used Pearson correlations and stepwise multiple regression.

• Universalism scored highest among the value dimensions at 4.65 out of 5, ahead of functional value at 4.08 and social value at 3.36 — respondents weighted care for animals and nature above recognition from people around them.
• The strongest predictor of purchase intention was brand loyalty (β = .486), followed by attitude (β = .300) and values (β = .119); together they explained 62.9% of the variance. Loyalty and purchase intention correlated most strongly at r = .74.
• The lowest-scoring loyalty item was “I would keep buying this brand even if its price increased”, while the advocacy items scored highest in that section at 4.40 — willing to recommend, unwilling to pay more.
• The best-liked communication tool was sales promotion at 4.59, followed by public relations at 4.46 and out-of-home media at 4.28, with direct marketing lowest — which the authors read as a rejection of hard selling.
• The lowest purchase-intention item was “I would buy even if it is not available locally”, at 3.60. Convenience of supply remains a condition.

The gap here is immediately usable for brands and for campaigners: values bring people to the shelf, but they do not carry them across a price difference. A brand communicating only on values earns loud advocacy and thin sales. The same data shows public relations that educates scoring second highest, which means it does a different job from promotion and the two have to run together — and that distribution, so the product is actually within reach, is not an optional part of the plan.