PENGARUH BRAND AUTHENTICITY DAN SCENT MARKETING TERHADAP KEPUTUSAN PEMBELIAN PARFUM HMNS DIMEDIASI OLEH EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT PADA KONSUMEN GENERASI Z

Abstract

This study examines the effects of brand authenticity and scent marketing on HMNS perfume purchase decisions among Generation Z consumers in Surabaya, with emotional attachment as a mediating variable. An explanatory quantitative approach with a cross-sectional design was employed. Primary data were collected from 171 respondents selected through non-probability purposive sampling, comprising Generation Z consumers domiciled in Surabaya who had purchased and used HMNS perfume. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS and a bootstrapping procedure of 5,000 subsamples. The findings indicate that brand authenticity has no significant direct effect on purchase decisions, whereas scent marketing has a positive and significant effect. Both brand authenticity and scent marketing positively and significantly affect emotional attachment, which in turn positively and significantly affects purchase decisions and emerges as the strongest direct predictor in the model. The mediation analysis shows that emotional attachment fully mediates the effect of brand authenticity and partially (complementary) mediates the effect of scent marketing on purchase decisions. The model explains 56.3 percent of the variance in emotional attachment and 60.9 percent of the variance in purchase decisions. These findings confirm that brand authenticity must be internalized into an emotional bond before it affects purchasing, while scent operates both as a core product attribute and as a sensory stimulus that builds consumers' emotional closeness to the brand.