A Scale to Assess the Efficacy of Consumer Decision Making

-- Ruchika Sachdeva

In today’s consumer-oriented society the utmost concern of the marketers is to know the consumers’ decision-making process. Consumer decision making is a process describing how a consumer makes choices. There is a shortage of marketing scales in India and the scales developed in other countries are not necessarily appropriate for use in India. The purpose of this research is to construct a scale to assess the efficacy of consumer decision making. Based on the previous literature, a 19-item scale is constructed, and after checking the various psychometrics of the scale, the scale is reduced to nine items. This scale is constructed on five parameters: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and post-purchase behavior. Psychometrics of the scale is tested with the help of data collected over two rounds. Using analytical tools like Cronbach’s alpha, item to total correlation, t-test and exploratory factor analysis, the author concludes that the scale has desirable, reliable and valid properties and thus could be used by the aspiring researchers.

© 2015 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Cracking the Digital Code: A Study of Indian Car Market

-- Rekha Dahiya

Digital marketing which has affected every facet of business has not left the Indian car market untouched. It affects consumer behavior to a significant extent right from awareness and evaluation to the post-purchase stage while buying a car. The paper aims to analyze the impact of digital practices being followed by Indian car market players on consumers’ buying-decision process. It finds the most preferred digital media channel used by the customers to search for information while buying a car. It also analyzes the demographic profile of the people who use digital channels while buying a car, and attempts to understand the impact of digital marketing communication by car marketers on consumers’ buying-decision process. The study is based on primary data collected by administering a structured questionnaire to the car owners in Delhi/NCR area for the period from May 2014 to October 2014. The data is analyzed with the help of statistical techniques like chi-square and t-test.

© 2015 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

The Influence of Availability of Shopping Time on Impulse Purchase Tendency

-- Ramesh Kumar Chaturvedi

It is believed that availability of time has differential effect on the purchase decision of shoppers. Leisure shoppers extensively visit the store aisles, whereas time-starved shoppers may overlook product details and even brands, and just focus on minimizing checkout hassles. This paper analyzes the availability of shopping time and its influence on impulse purchasing. The paper also analyzes who among the two categories of shoppers, the time starved or leisure shopper, would have higher proportion of impulse purchased items in their bill, i.e., whether ‘time’ factor has a differential impact on consumer impulse purchase behavior. Intercept retail survey is conducted on a carefully selected sample of shoppers and the collected data is analyzed with suitable statistical tools to reach certain interesting conclusions like time-starved shoppers are more impulsive buyers in comparison to non-time-starved shoppers. The findings of the study will help retailers to develop retail strategy and design stores to maximize impulse purchase-based revenue by providing them insights into time spent by the shoppers in store and their purchase behavior, which in turn will help them to discriminate shoppers’ purchasing behavior based on the time spent and train staff to deal with them suitably.

© 2015 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Strategies of Small-Scale Milk Producers: A Study in Azamgarh District, Uttar Pradesh

-- Kaushlendra Vikram Mishra

Milk is the main output of the dairy industry. The perishable nature of raw milk makes its marketing crucial for the small-scale milk producers. Like other developing countries, in India too there are organized and unorganized sectors for the marketing of milk and dairy products. In the unorganized sector, there are two main agencies—the milk vendors dudhiyas and halwais—who collect milk from cattle breeders and supply it to the customers at their doorstep. The organized sector comprises dairy cooperatives and organized modern-style private dairies. Generally, in this sector the large-scale dairy units use advanced technology and produce standardized products. They collect milk through their collection depots and transport it to their milk plants for processing and manufacturing. In the present study, an attempt has been made to examine the different marketing strategies adopted by the small-scale milk producers in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, India.

© 2015 IUP. All Rights Reserved.