Significant Considerations in the Purchase of Consumer Durables- A Study of Rural Consumer in Punjab
Project Report on Consumer Buying Behaviour- A Study on Consumer Durables
Questionnaire on Consumer Buying Behaviour
Introduction
Consumer
is the pivot around which the entire business revolves and consumers differ in
how they make purchase decisions, owing to variables like type of family,
income and occupation, status, etc., and the role the individual plays in the
decision process. Therefore, understanding of consumer behavior, which leads to
purchase, is very important.
Rural marketing can be defined as a “process
of delivering better standard of living and quality of life to the rural environment,
taking into consideration the prevailing rural milieu. It encompasses social interactions
between the rural and urban as well as within rural areas, which may be
spontaneous or planned” (Rao, 1985, pp. 315-326).
Brannon and Anderson (1996) conducted a
study to find whether the ease, acceptability and frequency of shopping away
from hometown stores had increased concern for the survival of small, independent,
locally owned businesses in rural towns. A study was conducted to determine the
relative position of hometown merchants, as compared to other shopping
alternatives, in the minds of rural consumers. The survey was mailed to randomly
selected residents in the six small Alabama towns selected to represent economic
and geographic diversity. Subjects were asked to indicate how frequently they
shopped at each shopping alternative, such as mass merchandisers, department
stores, specialty stores, hometown merchants and non-store options like
catalogs and television shopping. A scale ranging from ‘very frequently’ (once
a month or more) to ‘never’ was developed to determine the consumer’s shopping
frequency. Subjects were also asked to rate shopping alternatives from ‘best’
to ‘worst’ on each key attribute, such as value of price, assortment/selection,
quality, convenience, and service.
Reddy and Raju (1999) examined the rural consumer
behavior for seeds in Warangal District. Various factors influencing the buying
behavior of rural consumer with regard to purchase of seeds were also analyzed.
The motives in purchasing seeds comprised quality, price, service and availability
of seeds. About sources of purchase, majority of farmers were purchasing seeds
from wholesale shops (cities). The major problems identified with regard to
seeds were: charging of higher prices, supply of poor quality seeds, irregular
supply and short weightiest and adulteration.
Wang and Heitmeyer (2005) conducted a study
to understand Taiwanese consumers’ attitude towards foreign made apparel. Variables
examined were: Apparel attributes self-concept and demographics. Fishbein
attitude model was used to measure consumer attitude. The mall intercept method
was used to collect most data in 4 major cities of Taiwan. A total of 485
Taiwanese consumers completed and returned usable questionnaires. Results indicated
that consumer attitude towards Taiwan vs. US made apparel differed. Consumers
had an overall more positive attitude towards US made apparel compared with
Taiwan made apparel with respect to care instruction label, color, quality,
apparel, fiber content, fashion, attractiveness, brand name and comfort attributes.
For self concept variables, only modest/vain and thrifty/indulgent had a significant
difference between consumers who preferred US over Taiwan made apparel.
CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy,
2005) states that production index of consumer goods continued to display
impressive year on year growth in April 2004. During the month, index was up by
17.7% compared with a negligible 0.4% growth in April 2003. This was also the
eighth consecutive month of double-digit growth. This impressive growth in the
production of consumer durables in the past several months has been due to
increased demand from rural sector on account of higher growth in income.
Need of
the Study:
Consumer research in rural markets is the
need of the day to know about brand preferences, attitude, perception, purchase
pattern and post purchase feelings. The knowledge of purchase behavior may be
invaluable in devising market strategies—promotional programs and media
strategy. How do consumers buy, what they buy, when they buy and how do they
buy, these are the significant issues which ever y marketer wants to be taken
up by the researchers. It is in this light the paper was written.
Objectives
of the Study and Methodology
The specific objectives of the study were:
·
To analyze the planning of brand choice,
time of purchase, and choice of point of purchase.
·
To ascertain intensity of brand loyalty and
offer useful implications for marketers.
This study is based on the primary data
collected from rural consumers of Punjab (2007) with the help of well drafted,
pretested structured questionnaire. The universe of the study consists of
consumers residing in the rural areas of Amritsar district of Punjab state of
India. A sample of 325 respondent’s households was selected on the basis of
stratified sampling, random sampling and judgment sampling methods. The
effective sample was 300. There are five Tehsils in Amritsar district. Two
community development blocks were selected from each of the five tehsils by
using the random sampling technique. One town and five villages were selected
from each of the selected community development blocks that met the
stratification requirements. Thus, our sample at this stage consisted of 10
towns and 50 villages. The respondents were asked to rate the various factors
which were taken into consideration by them while choosing the place from where
to purchase the consumer durable. To measure the relative importance of factors
considered, Likert Scale (importance) has been used.
In order to test the suitability of the
data for factor analysis, the following steps were taken:
·
The correlation matrix was computed and
examined. This revealed that there were enough correlations to go ahead with
factor analysis.
·
Anti image correlations were computed. These
showed that partial correlations were low, indicating that true factors existed
in the data.
·
Kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy
(msa) for individual variables was studied from the diagonals of partial correlation
matrix. This was found to be sufficiently high for all variables.
·
Overall msa was found to be 0.539 which
indicated that the sample was good enough for sampling.
·
Bartelett’s test of sphericity showed statistically
significant number of correlations among the variables.
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