“Impact of culture, brand image and price on buying decisions: Evidence from East Java, Indonesia”

The marketing strategy phenomenon improves significantly, narrowing from a general to a specific cultural ethnicity base and from variable to dimension analysis. This study examines the impact of culture, brand image and price on buying decisions. The study population comprised retail consumers in the sampled area of Situbondo, East Java, Indonesia. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to derive a sample of 112 respondents as a primary data source – descriptive statistics allows for the demographic characteristics of retail consumers in East Java, Indonesia. Surprisingly, the data showed that gender involvement in buyer decision-making was dominant. Most retail customers were identified as private-sector employees and indicated for higher income earners. Responses were then analyzed using multiple linear regressions to answer the research hypotheses. The results showed that Hofstede’s culture dimension and the brand image and price significantly affected consumer buying decisions at re-tail stores in East Java, Indonesia. Regarding the strength of Islamic culture in East Java, price was the primary consideration in buying decisions. Further research, preferably using ethnographic approaches with an emphasis on qualitative research, is needed to investigate the implications of these relationships.

either internal or external, can influence consumer purchasing decisions there.Such an internal factor is the ability to control them, influencing individual culture (Muruganantham & Bhakat, 2013; Cakanlar & Nguyen, 2019).The culture potentially influenced consumer buying decisions (Shoham et al., 2015).Culture often has a potential influence on consumer behavior and impacts all stages of consumer decision-making (Ng & Lee, 2015).Unlike corporate marketing programs, culture inclusion does not always support the purchase or consumption of the product but can instead hinder it.For example, matters relating to beliefs (religion) prevent someone from consuming a particular product prohibited by their faith.
Most of the culture-based retailers in Indonesia have adopted Islamic values and principles, and Muslim employees organize them with a strong personality in Islamic values (culture).Friendly employees (culture) will influence buying decisions (Vinish et al., 2020).There are five perspectives dimensions to measure cultural context of a community: the distance of power, avoidance of uncertainty, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and feminity, and orientation to the long or short term (Hofstede, 1983).Cakanlar and Nguyen (2019) advised for further research to use the cultural dimension of Hofstede to understand consumer behavior.On the other hand, Shoham et al. (2015) found that Asian culture strengthened in the short and long term.Cultural differences in Hofstede's five dimensions can potentially influence consumer information, responses, behavioral decisions, and judgment (Ng & Lee, 2015).
In addition to culture, brand image is another variable that can also influence purchasing decisions (Sudaryanto, 2015;Sudaryanto et al., 2020).Batra and Homer (2004) observe that positioning a brand image in the consumer's mind becomes the most affordable strategy for gaining a competitive advantage to influence buying decision-making.Schiffman and Kanuk (1997) argue that brand image is the long-lasting perception and experience formulation consistent with relativity.Therefore, retail stores in Indonesia strive to showcase excellence and illustrate their benefits by their brand image, such as a motto of "A Good Shopping Place (Basmalah); all salesgirl wearing hijab (Al-Hikmah), and many others."Buying decisions are influenced not only by brand image but also by the price of the product.The prices of products must be in line with the target market.It is easier to measure a specific target market's purchasing power and decide the most affordable price strategy.Those retail stores in East Java have relatively lower prices than other retail stores due to their implementation of the sharia system (swa.co.id; sidogiri.net).Quiet and affordable product prices influence customer purchasing decisions.Accordingly, pricing-related findings usually constitute the most challenging and sensitive set of decisions that each company has to make, especially if it considers that the price is a critical factor in most buying (Hustić & Gregurec, 2015).Every consumer creates various alternatives to finding, buying, and using multiple products and brands at any given period, which is related to purchasing a product that meets their needs.A consumer buying decision is a stage created by consumers from the product recognition stage to post-purchase evaluation (Engel et al., 1995;Onigbinde & Odunlami, 2015).Purchasing decisions is influenced by consumers' beliefs, attitudes, values, and various social environment factors.
Based on the information above, this study investigates the following research questions: a.Does culture significantly affect purchasing decisions at a retail store in Indonesia?b.Does brand image substantially affect purchasing decisions at a retail store in Indonesia?and c.Does the price significantly affect purchasing decisions at a retail store in Indonesia?Consequently, this study's objectives are: (a).To test the impact of culture on buying decisions; (b).To test the effect of brand image on purchasing decisions; (c).To test the effects of prices on buying decisions.

Brand image
It is common sense for a customer to restore the memory of a brand image before buying or purchasing a product or service.Therefore, it is crucial to identify the term brand image and how it potentially influences the decision to buy.
According to Batra and Homer (2004) 2) image symbolic, where brands provide consumer satisfaction and increasing self-esteem (desires), status in a social environment, recognition of themselves and many others; and 3) the experience of imagery is the time when brands provide consumers with a pleasant experience.

Price
Price is an important thing that customers consider before buying a product.Kotler and Keller (2012), Kotler and Armstrong (2018) defined price as the amount of money needed to obtain the combination of products and services.Prices help consumers determine their purchasing decisions compared to the product's expected value (Hendalianpour, 2020;Ryu, 2020;Zielke, 2006;Sudaryanto et al., 2019).Consequently, a company must consider product prices to encourage consumers to buy their product ambitiously.It is natural for consumers to expect a high-quality product at an affordable price.
Price then becomes the most critical factor in buying decisions.According to Zielke (2006) 2021), price indicators are as follows: 1) price level is the valuation of benefits and comparison with similar products regarding the price without considering its quality; 2) price conformity to the product's quality is when the company's price is equal to the expected rate of the products aimed by consumers; and 3) price competitiveness is the price difference between companies' prices compared to similar product offered by other companies.

Buying decisions
Pre-purchase situation initiates the consumer's decision to buy, which consists of alternatives collected by the consumer and finalized by post-purchase evaluation (  1. Need for recognition; in the initial decision-making phase, consumers recognize their needs as a reason to buy a product.The customer is aware of the difference between real needs and desires for the product.The trigger of consumer needs comes from external and internal stimulation influenced by users of similar products.
2. Search for information; this is the stage at which consumers are encouraged to seek additional information about the goods and services or brands to be purchased.Consumers can only increase attention or actively seek information.
3. Alternative evaluation refers to using available data to weigh the value of alternatives and nominating products to be listed.
4. Purchase decisions: consumers organize and choose one nominated product that meets their needs and wants to buy.
5. Post-purchase behavior : this is the final stage of the purchase decision that refers to the experience after purchasing a product.The phase is an evaluation process of the benefit after consuming the product.Attention should be paid to the pros and cons of whether the customer was satisfied or dissatisfied with the product being used.1. Involvement -a situation where consumers decide to make a purchase because they are familiar with a product.
2. Interests -when a consumer chooses to buy due to the stores having the uniqueness of Islamic culture and taste of the product.
Based on these arguments, the following hypotheses are advanced: Ha1: Culture has a significant impact on a buying decision.Ha2: Brand image has a significant impact on a buying decision.Ha3: Price has a significant impact on a buying decision.

METHOD
The type of research is a quantitative explanatory research work underpinned by positivist philosophy.The study examines the relationship between predictors toward a predicted variable (Malhotra & Birks., 2007;Zhao, 2020).Descriptive statistical analysis provides the demographic characteristics of respondents.The unit of analysis for this study is the customers of the Basmalah store in East Java, Indonesia.
The population of the study was the consumers of the retail store in East Java, Indonesia.The study adopted a multi-stage sampling method as an alternative probability sampling technique, which is applicable when the population abundance and each selected sample's trait have a high spatial structure (Kuno, 1976).In probability sampling, where there is a cluster of the population at each stage, a representative sample was chosen randomly to provide equal chances for the population (Prabowo et  Descriptive statistics on the respondent's demographic profiles were presented in a qualitative analysis followed by hypothesis testing using multiple-linear regression.Responses from questionnaires were analyzed using multivariate analysis of multiple linear regressions.This statistical analysis was used to identify the causa relationship between three independent variables (X1, culture; X2, brand image; X3, price) in relation to dependent variables (Y, buying decision) and to test hypotheses.Table 1 shows the variables and indicators of three predictors and one predicted variable.Price conformity with product quality 3.
When purchasing a product in the store, the customer looks for lower prices offered with other similar products (Chan et al., 2011) Price competitiveness

Predicted variable
Buying decision

RESULTS
The questionnaire passed instrument testing, such as validity and reliability measurement.The validity instrument was tested using correlation product-moment; with a p-value < α 0.05, all the questionnaire instruments were valid.
The process was also a reliability instrument test with the result; all variables were reliable with Cronbach's alpha (α) > 0.05.These test results mean that the questionnaire instrument can be used in other times and places at a similar situation and produces valid data (Hair et al., 2014;Pansiri & Mmereki, 2010).
SPSS software was used to enumerate the data for multivariate statistical analysis.Before that, the data were tested on their normality using skewness and kurtosis.Rule of thumb, the value of those two statistical parameters should be no more than +/-1.96for the hypotheses testing with α = 0.05 (Hair et al., 2014).In this study, all variables pass the normality test with the value of skewness-1.063(X1), -1.178 (X2), and -1.052 (X3).While the Kurtosis test results are as follows -0.192 (culture), 0.22 (brand image), and (0.787 (price) To ensure that the data meet particular classical assumption requirements, the normality of model, multicollinearity, and heteroscedasticity were used.Figure 1 presents the normality of the model, Table 2 presents the multicollinearity test result, and Table 3 presents the heteroscedasticity test result.

Descriptive data
This study found some demographic characteristics of the respondents.Out of 112 respondents participated in the study, 30.4% were men, and 69.6% were women.The majority of the respondents' ages were 18 to 40 years old, as many as 59.8%.Many as 29.5% were between 40 and 60, while respondents older than 40 were 10.7%.
As many as 25.9% of the respondents were housewives, while 16.1% were students of high schools and universities; 18.8% were government employees, 12.5% worked as private employees, and 26.8% were private businesses.This focus of concern is in line with class income, the majority of the respondents' income, 50.9%, was IDR 2.5 million and above, and the rest was below IDR 2.5 million.
Data collected from the questionnaire's perceptual response was then analyzed using SPSS software to produce statistical analysis.A summary of the results is presented in Table 4.

Table 4. Multiple linear regression summary
Source: Primary data (processed).4 presents the summary of multiple linear regressions with R's value (coefficient of battle coefficient) of 0.870.This value reflects that a direct relationship between culture (X1), brand image (X2), and price (X3) towards buying decisions (Y) was 87%.At the same time, the Adjusted R 2 (Adj R 2 ) represents the strength of the predictors -culture (X1), brand image (X2), and price (X3) -on predicting the buying decisions (Y) with the power of 75.8%, while the remaining 24.2% depended onthe research model.On this basis, the regression equation is as follows:

Variable
The beta value is -4.147, which means that when there is no value of the variables of culture, brand image, and price; the buying decision would be -4.147.Besides, the variable coefficient of culture is positive at 0.265, which means that any increase of one unit in the culture variable will result in a 0.265 increase in the buying decision.Concurrently, the positive variable coefficient of the brand image was 0.281, which means that any increase of one unit in the brand's image would increase the chance of the buying decision as much as 0.281.The variable coefficient of the price was positive 0.364, which means that any increase of one unit in price would increase the chance of the buying decision as much as 0.364.
When independent variables are tested simultaneously with the statistical analysis results, the value of F Test is 112.602, which is greater than the F table (df1 = 3; df2 = 108) with a value of 26.89 and a p-value of 0.000 < 0.05.It can be interpreted that Hofstede's cultural dimension, brand image, and price simultaneously influenced the buying decision of retail customers in East Java, Indonesia.

DISCUSSION
According to the research findings, retail buying decisions in Indonesia have some unique characteristics.Descriptive statistics of the typical respondent involved in the buying process are typically women under 40.This finding means that gender plays a vital role in shopping at the retail stores in Indonesia, which is exciting and needs attention.It was also found that the recommendations of these customers were segmented by employees who worked in the private sector with an income of more than IDR 2.5 million.
For the hypotheses testing purposes, three independent variables such as culture, brand image, and price were used to predict causality with the dependent variable of a buying decision.The first analysis did not accept the H01 that there is no significant influence of culture on the buying decision.This finding means that the proposed alternative to the hypothesis Ha1: Culture has a significant effect on buying decisions, must be accepted.Accordingly, Hofstede's (1983)  The last hypothesis test was not to accept H03 and noted no significant influence on buying decision price.This finding means that the proposed alternative hypothesis Ha3: Price has a significant influence on buying decisions, should be accepted.Price sensitivity would stimulate the decision to buy a product from the retail store in Indonesia.This finding supports the studies by Zelkie (2015) and Ryu (2020).The price elasticity will be more than 1, which means that any increase in price will decrease the product or services' demand by more than one scale.The rationale is that women with more rigid funding are more prevalent among retail customers in Indonesia.

CONCLUSION
Hofstede's (1983) cultural dimension is still present in numerous research publications and applies to any nation.In the study, the cultural dimension was applied concurrently with brand image and price towards buying decisions in East Java, Indonesia, which is culturally strong Islamic faith.An important finding from the study was that the consumer's buying decision of the retail stores in East Java, Indonesia was dominated by educated and professional women.Gender was a central point in configuring the decision maker.
The study also indicates that Hofstede's cultural dimension still exists in retail business consumer behavior in East Java, Indonesia.The urgency of this finding implies that culture plays a significant role in retail stores in the country with strong cultural values.This phenomenon is necessary to improve the innovativeness of customer retention management.
Brand image and price have been found to positively influence buying decisions.Therefore, a better brand image by a store in East Java, Indonesia, will improve consumer purchasing decisions.Similarly, the better the retail store's price, the more it will positively influence consumer purchasing decisions.This phenomenon was related to the gender issue.
The survey was conducted in the era leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, therefore, the recommendation to future research is to conduct similar research in both pandemic and post-pandemic eras.A deeper similar study of cultural approaches in qualitative approaches is also proposed.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Model normality al., 2020;Rusdiyanto et al., 2020;Syafii et al., 2020).The inevitable population in the last stage has to be known.The stores were available in the East Java Province, so the first stage involved choosing one region out of 36 (Ind.Kabupaten and Kota); the Situbondo region is the sample.At the second stage, one store was randomly selected out of five Basmalah stores available in the region; the Basmalah Tenggir store customer was randomly selected as the unit of analysis.
Hair et al. (2014)d Webb (2012),Hair et al. (2014)stated that the size of the sample depended on the number of observations.The sample size is the num-

Table 1 .
Definition of operational variables and their indicators

Table 3 .
Heteroscedasticity test result Vinish et al. (2020)pplies to retail stores in East Java, Indonesia, and strongly influences buying decisions.This research finding supportsVinish et al. (2020).