Predicting Purchase Intention towards Battery Electric Vehicles: A Case of Indonesian Market

Abstract

The emergence of electric vehicles (EV) is inevitable. In Indonesia, EVs in various forms have been introduced to the market. However, the adoption of EV in the Indonesian market is still negligible. The purpose of this paper is to make an early prediction of consumers’ purchase intentions towards EV, particularly battery electric vehicles (BEV), in Indonesia. A multi-criteria decision model based on the analytic network process (ANP) approach has been proposed. There are several main criteria used to explain the purchase/don’t purchase decision towards BEV, namely functionality, emotion, cost of ownership, and car identity. Through a series of pairwise comparisons involving a number of target customers of senior level professionals, their purchase intentions towards BEV have been predicted. The results of this study show that these early wealthy, highly educated consumers have a moderate preference towards purchasing BEV. Their intention to purchase is influenced by criteria as follows: emotion (42.64%), functionality (25.94%), car identity (21.87%), and cost of ownership (9.55%). Even though the invited target customers do not represent the mass market, the findings of this study could help BEV makers in Indonesia choose who the early adopters are and find the BEV product-market fit in order to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.