The Purchase Decision of Halal Labeled Products Based on Brand Awareness and Brand Image for Bugis-Makassar Consumers

The study aimed to investigate how brand awareness and brand image influence the purchasing decisions of Bugis-Makassar consumers in Makassar City when buying halal products, given the competitive market and the increasing availability of foreign products. The study utilized a questionnaire distributed to 100 respondents using purposive sampling. The data collected was analyzed using multiple linear regression. The study found that both brand awareness and brand image had a positive and significant impact on the purchasing decisions of Bugis-Makassar consumers when buying halal products. Furthermore, brand awareness and brand image had a significant impact on the purchasing decisions of halal products when analyzed simultaneously. The R value of 51.9% indicates that brand awareness and brand image variables have a strong influence on the purchasing decisions of halal products. The findings of this study have significant implications for businesses operating in the halal product market. Companies should prioritize building brand awareness and creating a positive brand image to attract and retain customers in the competitive market. Furthermore, companies should understand the unique needs and preferences of the Bugis-Makassar community to tailor their marketing strategies accordingly.


INTRODUCTION
Indonesian communities, notably the Makassar Bugis ethnic group, are recognized for their religious conduct and steadfast adherence to religious values in their daily lives.These values govern what is deemed acceptable or unacceptable based on their religious teachings.The significance of faith is also evident in shopping patterns, with the Makassar Bugis community seeking information beforehand to determine if a product is halal before making a purchase.As a result, many marketing campaigns aimed at this community include religious symbols as part of their marketing strategy (Kasnaeny, 2016).
Phenomena related to shopping activities are also inseparable from the values of faith, where what is seen is that the people of the Makassar Bugis tribe will search for information in advance about whether a product is halal or not to use, so that a lot of marketing features religious symbols in the strategy their marketing (Astogini et al., 2011).
ISSN: 2549-3221 (Print) 2549-323X (Online) DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.26487/hebr.v6i1.5085According to Kumala (2012) an interest in a product is a consumer's self-instruction to carry out product purchasing activities, carry out a plan, and take appropriate actions and finally make a decision to choose a product.One thing to pay attention to is the brand (brand) of a product, because brands are considered to be able to describe the quality of a product, and brands are able to build consumer trust (Rachmaningrum and Mudiantono, 2011).To get to know a product apart from the brand, it is necessary to create brand awareness and brand image, the goal is to be able to differentiate the company's products from those of its competitors.Brand awareness is the first step in building a product brand.Brand awareness can be created through brand familiarity through repeated exposure, so that consumers will feel they know the product because they often see it.
To attract consumers to choose the products being sold, companies cannot ignore the strategic role that brand image plays in the market.A strong brand identity provides a significant competitive advantage.It is very profitable if a product has a positive brand image, so a business must always uphold and maintain its brand image.The halal label and brand image have a relationship with a person's decision to consume a product (Prastya and Suryadi, 2020).
Products that have been deemed halal according to Islamic law are known as halal products.The process of ensuring product halalness includes the provision of materials, processing, storage, packaging, distribution, sales and product presentation.This process is referred to as Halal Product Processing, or PPH for short (Alfikri et al., 2019).Halal labeling plays a role in increasing sales to attract consumers, especially Muslim consumers, where the purchase decision can serve as a measure of the level of sales of products that have been determined as halal with products where there is no clarity between halal and haram (Edi Wibowo and Diah Madusari, 2018).Febriyana et al. (2019) stated that Muslim consumers pay great attention to the halal label on products in making their purchasing decisions.
The majority of the Bugis-Makassar ethnic group and almost 100 percent are Muslim, whatever their activities are always adjusted to the values of religious teachings, especially the philosophy of "Mappesona ri Dewata Seuwae" which means always relying on the teachings of God Almighty.In making purchases, they pay great attention to the halal label on a product, but there has been no study showing whether the decision to purchase a product that is labeled halal is also influenced by brand awareness and brand image.So this study seeks to explore this.Thus, we want to explore whether brand awareness and brand image have an influence on purchasing decisions for products labeled halal by Bugis-Makassar consumers.

Brand
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or a mixture of these that is used to identify a seller's goods and services and differentiate them from competitors (Kotler et al., 2021) .According to (Romdonny and Rosmadi, 2018), a brand is basically a seller's promise to continuously communicate certain qualities and advantages to customers.(Oktaviani and Sutopo, 2014) emphasized that brands are very important for producers and consumers.Brands facilitate purchases from the consumer's point of view.In addition, brands provide buyers with assurance that they will always receive products of a high standard of quality.From a manufacturer's point of view, brands facilitate product handling or tracking, offer business legal protection, and exhibit certain quality standards to ensure satisfied customers.

Brand Awareness
According to Shimp and Andrews (2013), brand awareness is the ability of a brand to appear in the minds of consumers when they are thinking about a particular product category and how easily the name appears, furthermore, brand awareness is a basic dimension in brand equity.Brand awareness according to Nujulia (2017) is the ability of a potential buyer to recognize and remember a brand as part of a product with the brand involved.
Increasing brand awareness is a mechanism to expand brand market.The higher the level of brand awareness of a brand in the minds of consumers, the more attached a brand will be in the minds of consumers, so that it is more likely that the brand will be considered in a purchase and the greater the possibility that it will be chosen by consumers.In general, consumers tend to choose products with familiar brands on the basis of convenience, safety and other considerations.So it can be concluded that brands that have a high level of brand awareness are more likely to be chosen by consumers and this will continue to the decision to choose the product repeatedly (Suciningtyas, 2012).
There are 4 indicators that can be used to find out how far consumers are aware of the existence of a brand, includ-ing (a) Recall is how far consumers can remember the brand when asked what brands they remember, (b) Recognition, that is, consumers can recognize that the brand belongs to a certain category, (c) Purchase, namely how far consumers will enter a brand into alternative choices when buying a product, and (d) Consumption is how far consumers still remember a brand when using a competitor's product.
Based on this, the hypotheses that can be developed are: H1: Brand awareness has a significant effect on purchasing decisions for products labeled halal.

Brand Image
Brand image is a perception of a brand that is described by brand associations that exist in consumers' memories (Kotler et al., 2021).Brand image describes the extrinsic nature of products or services, including the way in which brands try to meet the psychological or social needs of customers.
Another opinion was expressed by Purnamasari (2014) who stated that brand image is a set of brand associations that are formed and stick in the minds of consumers.From several experts, it can be concluded that brand image is a set of associations that are perceived by consumers for certain brands.
The indicators that form a brand image according to Tanoni (2014) are as follows: • Corporate Image, the image that exists within the company itself.The company as an organization tries to build its image with the aim of having a good image, so that it will affect everything about what the company does.
• Product Image, can be formed directly from experience and contact with the use of the brand.Includes product attributes, product quality assurance, and product offerings.
• User/consumer image, the consumer's image of a product can have a positive or negative effect on the needs, desires and expectations of consumers.The image of the product can support the creation of a brand image.
Brand image is very supportive of the creation of buying interest (Oktaviani and Sutopo, 2014) which will have an impact on increasing the number of product sales.The better the brand image, the consumer will recognize the quality of the company's products, and usually the consumer will make a quick decision if there is a brand that offers the same benefits as other brands (Suciningtyas, 2012).While (Mahmud, 2022) states that brand image has an effect on purchase intention.Thus the second hypothesis that can be compiled is: H2: Brand image has a significant effect on purchasing decisions for products labeled halal by Bugis-Makassar consumers.

Purchasing Decision
Kotler et al. ( 2021) said the purchase decision process is a consumer process through five stages, including problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decisions, and post-purchase behavior, which begins long before the actual purchase is made and has an impact long after that.Furthermore, Kotler et al. (2021), (Dinawan, 2010) states that purchasing decisions are purchases of the most desirable brands, where each individual has almost the same way of making decisions.Even so, there are several factors that can differentiate decision-making between individuals, including age, character, income, and lifestyle.
As explained by Olson and Paul (2005) assume that individual purchasing choices are compromise patterns that combine data to evaluate a choice around two elective practices and choose one of them.In short, consumer decisions are interactions choosing activities where at least the decision is elective to achieve certain critical thinking.Kotler et al. (2021) describe several indicators in determining buyer choices including recognition of a problem, information exploration, alternative assessment, purchase choices, post-purchase actions.

Model
In general, this analysis is used to examine the effect of the independent variable (X) on the dependent variable (Y).In this study, the independent variables are brand awareness (X1) and brand image (X2).The dependent variable is Purchase Decision (Y) so that the multiple regression equation is: where Y : Purchase Decision; X1 : brand awareness; X2 : brand image; ϵ : error term.

Correlation Coeflcient and Coeflcient of Determination
According to Shoukri and Chaudhary (2007) the value of the correlation coefficient (R) shows how big the correlation or relationship is between the independent variables and the dependent variable.The correlation coefficient is said to be strong if it is above 0.5 close to 1, while the value of the coefficient of determination is determined by the square of the correlation coefficient value.The coefficient of determination is used to see the contribution made by the independent variable to the dependent variable.Meanwhile, to determine the feasibility of the research instrument, it was tested using a validity test and a reliability test.

Validity test
Based on Table 1, it shows that all the indicators asked in the questionnaire are valid, as evidenced by the correlation value above 0.30.

Reliability Test
Table 2 shows the Cronbach's Alpha value of all variables having a Cronbach's Alpha value greater than 0.60 so that it can be concluded that the indicators or questionnaires used in brand awareness and brand image variables, as well as purchasing decisions, are all declared reliable or can be trusted as measuring tools.In testing the classical assumptions, results were also obtained that did not violate the provisions of the multicollinearity test, heteroscedasticity test, and data normality test.So there is no relationship between variables, and the data is normally distributed.

Results of Multiple Regression Analysis
The regression analysis results are as follows.

Correlation Coeflcient And Determination Coeflcient
The value of the correlation coefficient (R) shows how big the correlation or relationship is between the independent variables and the dependent variable.The correlation coefficient is said to be strong if it is above 0.5 and close to 1.
Based on these calculations, it produces a correlation coefficient (R) of 0.519, so it can be said that there is a strong relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable because the R value is greater than 0.5.The coefficient of determination (R square) is 0.270, indicating that 27% of the influence of the independent variables on the dependent variable is contributed by the two independent variables.The remaining 73% of the explanation for the emergence of consumer purchasing decisions is given by other variables not discussed in this study.
The value of the correlation coefficient (R) is 0.519 which shows that the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable can be said to be strong, because it has an R value above 0.5.Then the value of the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) is 0.270, which shows that the percentage contribution of the independent variable to the dependent variable is 27%, this means that the emergence of consumer purchasing decisions can be explained by the two independent variables, which are equal to 27% and the remaining 73% is explained by other variables not explained in this study.
1.The Influence of Brand Awareness on the Purchase Decision of Halal Labeled Products in Makassar Bugis Ethnic Consumers.
Based on the results of the regression test and partial test (t test), it was concluded that brand awareness on purchasing decisions has a positive and significant influence.This means that the stronger the brand is remembered by consumers, the stronger they will choose to buy products with the "halal" label.This shows that for Makassar Bugis consumers in Makassar city, brand recognition plays an important role in determining consumer decisions to buy products with a halal label.
The ability of potential customers to recognize and remember the brand as a product component with the brand included is known as brand awareness.Repeated exposure, especially when marketers often provide information about goods provided in various media, is one of the efforts made by corporate marketers to create brand awareness in customer memory.This is intended so that regular exposure will help potential customers remember and recognize the products presented, which will ultimately influence their choice to choose the company's products.
The findings of this study support the theory put forward by Nujulia (2017) which states that consumers tend to choose well-known brands because they feel safe using them and can avoid various dangers of use because they are considered more reliable.The findings of this study agree with Anifah (2014) that brand awareness has a significant effect and benefits consumer interest in making a purchase.Bank Mandiri Syariah.This shows that one of the important elements that can be utilized is brand awareness.
2. The Influence of Brand Image on Purchasing Decisions of Halal Labeled Products for Makassar Bugis Ethnic Consumers.
Based on the results of the regression test and partial test (t-test), it is concluded that brand image has a positive and significant effect on consumer decisions to buy products labeled halal.This implies that the better the brand image developed by the company that owns the product, the better.increase the desire of consumers to buy the product provided.Brand image is seen as a form of assumption that buyers make when they think of a particular brand.Businesses should work to build a positive reputation by offering a decent and great quality of service.
A strong brand reputation can influence consumer decisions about which products to buy.The findings of this study are in line with Prawira and Yasa (2012) that brand image had a beneficial and significant effect on consumer willingness to buy Samsung smartphone products.

CONCLUSION
The following conclusions can be drawn from the data analysis and the results of testing the hypothesis.First, Brand Awareness has a positive and significant effect on consumer decisions to buy goods with a halal mark.This shows that consumers tend to want to buy supplied halal products if their perception of the company's brand is getting better.Second, Brand Image has a strong influence on consumer decisions to buy products with a halal mark.This shows that consumers are more likely to choose to buy products with a halal label if the company is able to build a stronger brand image.
The halal label is the main consumer decision in making a purchase, but without brand recognition and brand image, it will be difficult for consumers to identify halal and non-halal products.For this reason, corporate marketers need to improve communication about brands and brand images to the public.The value of the coefficient of determination (R square) is 0.270, which shows that the percentage contribution of the independent variable to the dependent variable is 27%, this means that the emergence of consumer purchasing decisions can be explained by the two independent variables, namely 27% and the remaining 73% explained by other variables not explained in this study.Therefore, further researchers can conduct research on the same topic but add other variables beyond the variables that have been studied.

Table 1 :
Validity Test Results

Table 2 :
Reliability Test Results

Table 3 :
Multiple Regression Analysis Results