A Research Paper on Purchasing Behavior of Rural and Urban College Going Students over Apparels, Prakasam District, A.P.

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1 A Research Paper on Purchasing Behavior of Rural and Urban College Going Students over Apparels, Prakasam District, A.P. Abstract Dr. P.Subbaiah Professor, Department of Management studies, SSN College of Engineering and Technology, Ongole Consumer behavior is all about psychological, social and physical behavior of potential customers namely individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society. Buyer s reactions to a firms marketing strategy has a great impact on the firm s success. Thus, now a day understanding the consumer buying behavior has become vital to producers/marketers. The study highlights the major socio-economic differences between rural and urban college going students in terms of their purchasing habits, brand awareness and the student s preference of brands, paying capacity, patterns of shopping and overall purchasing behavior of the college going students. It is also indispensable to marketers/ designers to know what kind of apparels that the respondents like more, where do they buy and what type they buy and in what quantity they buy, to design and redesign their business strategies to cope up with competition in the market. The conceptualization is then tested with primary quantitative survey data collected from students studying in different colleges of Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh. Correlation, Chi-square tests and percentages are used in the study. Key words: Apparels, Brand awareness, Business strategy, Consumer behavior, Socio economic differences. INTRODUCTION: Today in this consumer-centered society, clothing has become an indispensable part of us; often we spend lot of time to decide about clothes we wear. Considerable amount of time goes in decisionmaking while selecting and purchasing clothes. Young people are very careful in their appearance management, now a days they notice and are noticed by their counterparts and exhibit unique clothing behavior. Hence, clothing behavior became an area of research. Consumer values, education and social class play a key role in affecting product attitude and purchase behavior, these factors eventually prioritize one s needs which are ultimately fulfilled through purchase of particular consumer products. Consumer preferences for certain products also change over time as their consumption, situation and environment change (Yau 1994). In a study on the urban college-goers of India, researchers found that outer-directed values influenced the psychographic traits, fashion consciousness and innovativeness positively, psychographic traits of fashion-consciousness and innovativeness act as intervening variables between values and clothing purchase behavior (Roy and Goswami 2007). Prakasam district being located in between two major cities namely Vijayawada and Nellore, commercially well developed district, it is been estimated that the city s annual turnover of apparels is around 60 corers which is supplemented by around 10 engineering and 17 degree colleges are located in and around the city. Hence, the present research worth undertaking. IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY: Consumer behavior as a body of knowledge emphasizes on the study of both physical activities and decision making processes that occur in the process of search, evaluation acquiring, use and disposal of products. This study helps to understand the purchasing behavior of rural and urban college going students. Also to estimate what type of garments they prefer to purchase and where do they want to > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 8

2 purchase, now a days the rural people are purchasing in cities, why they are particularly purchasing in the cities and what factors they are considering while choosing the stores. Brand they prefer and how much amount they are willing to pay per pair of dress. And on what occasion they generally purchase the garments. Consumer behavior encompasses vast areas of human activities that have direct interface with technology. Understanding market preferences when a product has, say five key attributes: say price, quality, style, brand and packaging, these attributes and their associated levels represent the factors that materially affect consumer preferences. OBJECTIVES: 1. To ascertain empirically the differences between rural and urban students purchase behavior with respect to frequency of buying apparels. 2. To ascertain the differences between rural and urban students purchase behavior with respect to place of buying apparels. 3. To determine the differences between rural and urban students buying behavior with respect to preference of brand. 4. To know how much amount can be spent by rural and urban students on purchasing per pair of apparels. 5. To determine whether there is significant difference between rural and urban students purchase behavior of apparels. HYPOTHESIS:- 1. There is no significant difference between rural and urban students purchase behavior with respect to frequency of buying apparels. 2. There is no significant difference between rural and urban students purchase behavior with respect to place of buying apparels. 3. There is no significant difference between rural and urban students purchase behavior with respect to preference of brand. 4. There is no significant difference between rural and urban students purchase behavior with respect to spending of amount per pair on purchase of apparels. SCOPE: 1. The study is restricted to Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh only. 2. The Sample size is 109, as population is large it may not accurately represent the population parameters. 3. The study embraces only rural and urban students purchase behavior with respect to apparels; it may not apply to other products. REVIEW OF LITERATURE 1. Bian et al., (2005) 1, Inequalities prevail in every society on the basis of different aspects like income, status and occupation, and groups. 2. Howard and Sheth, (1969) 2, Behaviors of consumers differ in making purchase. 3. Rich and Jain, (1968) 3, differences between every class lead to different buying behaviors. These classes exist in every society and culture and it shape their lifestyle accordingly due to which people show various behaviors while shopping. 4. Stuber, (2009) 4, Social classes also have an effect on college students their learning abilities, social and cultural activities. Students with high class are better able to gain resources and move upward In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 9

3 their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. 5. Hamilton, (2009) 5, shopping behaviors differs according to class to class. Social differences exist between low income groups and high income group s families. Families with low income feel that priorities made by them are incompatible, which force them to bargain and choose suitable strategies for consumption decision. 6. Ebenkam, (2005) 6, Social class is a reality as it affects lifestyle, attitude, and behaviors of people. People go in pizza hut and McDonalds for dinner, now in our society it becomes a symbol of status to go there and have food. Younger people have different buying preferences as compare to older people. Older people did not mold themselves easily according to the new trends, but younger people have flexibility to change their styles and looks. That is the reason their buying preferences of purchasing are different. 7. Newmann and staelin (1972) 7, In their scholarly study, made the findings that lend support to the hypothesis that purchase and a product result in learning, which later influences buyer behavior, their results, as well as those of earlier studies indicated that the amount of information sought by many buyers was small, but it did not necessarily mean that buyers were ill informed. 8. Bogart and Lehman (1973) 8, in their psychological study of unaided brand recall by female household head, examined some factors related to brand recall. Their findings indicted that brand recall was a complex and dynamic process. 9. Burger and Herbst (2002) 9 used a conjoint approach to determine the importance of certain clothing attributes, such as style, price, brand and outlet choice during the decision-making process of teenagers when purchasing denims. Teachers from two Afrikaans and two English schools in the Pretoria region acted as interviewers, and presented 213 (13-16 years) secondary School pupils with 25 hypothetical paired-wise product profiles. The results indicated, inter alia, that the brand name (for example Levi or Diesel) is the most important attribute teenagers consider before making a purchase. Diesel was the most popular brand, followed by Calvin Klein. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: Purpose of the study is to examine purchasing behavior of rural and urban college going students on apparels to identify the variables that predict fashion involvement. A random sample of 109 college going students were selected from graduate and post graduate colleges and were interviewed to solicit the required data. The study covers rural and urban college going students in Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh. RESEARCH DESIGN: The current exploratory research used Snow ball sampling method to collect quantitative data to test hypotheses. Initial contact with the participants was made through a questionnaire informing them of their selection for the study and asking them to contact their friends in order to solicit the data. After obtaining the data it is edited, tabulated and analyzed by using spss-18th version. PERIOD OF STUDY: The study was conducted in the month of Nov-Dec, 2013 DISCUSSION: The data collected from the respondents were systematically edited, tabulated and analyzed; and presented under the following heads Part A: Demographic profile of the respondents is provided. Part B: Influence of place of residence (i.e. urban or rural) over the purchase decision of the consumers over apparels is presented. > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 10

4 Part: A: TABLE: 1.DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF THE RESPONDENTS Gender No. of Percent Age in No. of Percent Education No. of Percent Respondents years Respondents Respondents Male Degree Female PG Total Total Total Religion No. of Respondents Percent Place of residence No. of Respondents Percent Hindu Urban Christian Rural Muslim Total Total From the above table.1 it observed that 71.6 percent of the respondents are male and the remaining is female. There are about 73.4 percent of the respondents are in the age group of years and 21.1 percent of the respondents are in the age group of years and only 5.5 percent are in the age group of years. This indicates that majority of the college going students are in the age group of 18 to 20 years percent of the respondents are graduates and the remaining 15.6 percent are post graduates. Majority of the respondents constituted Hindus i.e percent, and 2.8 percent are Christians and 5.5 percent are Muslims. The surveys constituted 56 percent of the respondents are urban students and 44 percent rural students. Part: B. Influence of place of residence (i.e. urban and rural) over place of buying, frequency of buying, preference of brand and the amount that each category of inhabitants can spend on purchasing per pair of apparels are analyzed and presented. TABLE: 2. PLACE OF RESIDENCE AND PLACE OF BUYING place of residence place of buying native mandal native town nearby city Total URBAN RURAL Total From the table.2, it can be observed that out of 61 urban respondents 27 expressed willingness to buy the garments in the nearby city, whereas out of 48 rural respondents 33 told that they buy the garments in their native town and only very few i.e.3 respondents told that they buy in the nearby city. This may be due to proximity of distance, hassle of transportation and price difference. TABLE: 3. CHI-SQUARE TEST Value df Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) Pearson Chi-Square a Likelihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear Association N of Valid Cases 109 a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 11

5 The Chi-Square statistic (22.06) and its small significance level (p <.001) indicate that it is very unlikely that these variables are independent of each other. Thus, we can conclude that there is a relationship between a person's place of buying and their place of residence. TABLE: 4. CORRELATIONS place of residence place of buying preference of brand place of residence Pearson Correlation **.209 * Sig. (2-tailed) N place of buying Pearson Correlation ** Sig. (2-tailed) N preference of brand Pearson Correlation.209 * Sig. (2-tailed) N **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Inference -1: From the above table it is evident that the correlation between place of residence and place of buying is having a p<0.006 which is less than 0.01 at 1% level of significance. So we can say that there is significant influence of one variable over the other i.e. the place of residence is influencing the place of buying. Inference-2: From the above table it is evident that the correlation between place of residence and preference of brand is having a p<0.029 which is more than 0.01 at 1% level of significance. So we can say that there is insignificant influence of one variable over the other i.e. the place of residence is not much influencing the preference of brand. Inference-3: From the above table it is evident that the correlation between place of buying and preference of brand is having a p<0.191 which is more than 0.01 at 1% level of significance. So we can say that there is insignificant influence of one variable over the other i.e. the place of buying is not much influencing the preference of brand. TABLE: 5. FREQUENCY OF BUYING READYMADE GARMENTS Freq of buying Readymade garments No. of Respondents Percent always often occasionally rare Total From the above table.5, it is observed that 51(46.8) respondents said that they buy readymade garments often, 33(30.3) respondents said that they buy always, 19 (17.4) respondents said that they buy readymade garments rarely, and only 6 (5.5) respondents said that they buy readymade garments occasionally. It is observed that many of the people are willing to buy the readymade garments. > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 12

6 TABLE: 6. PLACE OF RESIDENCE AND FREQUENCY OF BUYING READYMADE GARMENTS place of residence freq of buying readymade garments always often occasionally rare Total URBAN 24(39.3%) 30(49.2%) 6(9.8%) 1(1.6%) 61(100.0%) RURAL 9(18.8%) 21(43.8%) 0(.0%) 18(37.5%) 48(100.0%) Total 33(30.3%) 51(46.8%) 6(5.5%) 19(17.4%) 109(100.0%) The above table 6 reveals that 24(39.3%) and 30(49.2%) urban respondents said that they buy readymade garments always and often respectively. Whereas 21(43.8%) and 18(37.5%) rural respondents said that they buy readymade garments often and rarely respectively. From this it can be said that urban people prefer to buy readymade garments relatively more than that of rural people. TABLE: 7. PLACE OF RESIDENCE AND PREFERENCE OF BRAND place of residence preference of brand branded unbranded Total URBAN RURAL Total From the above table it is observed that out of 61 urban respondents 51 are willing to buy Branded garments, only 10 of the respondents are willing to buy unbranded. Also from the table it is observed that out of 48 rural respondents 32 are willing to buy Branded garments, and 16 are willing to buy unbranded garments. From this it is inferred that both urban and rural people prefer to buy branded garments. TABLE: 8. CHI-SQUARE TEST BETWEEN PLACE OF RESIDENCE AND PREFERENCE OF BRAND Value df Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) Exact Sig. (2-sided) Exact Sig. (1-sided) Pearson Chi-Square a Continuity Correction b Likelihood Ratio Fisher's Exact Test Linear-by-Linear Association N of Valid Cases 109 a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is b. Computed only for a 2x2 table The Chi-Square statistic a and its large significance level (p >.001) indicate that it is very likely that these variables are independent of each other. Thus, we can conclude that there is no relationship between a person's place of buying and their place of residence. TABLE: 9. PLACE OF RESIDENCE AND AMOUNT (IN RS) CAN SPEND ON PER PAIR OF DRESS. Place of residence Amount( in Rs) can spend on per pair below above Total URBAN 10(16.4%) 16(26.2%) 13(21.3%) 22(36.1%) 61(100.0%) RURAL 0(.0%) 11(22.9%) 31(64.6%) 6(12.5%) 48(100.0%) Total 10(9.2%) 27(24.8%) 44(40.4%) 28(25.7%) 109(100.0%) > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 13

7 From the above table is found that urban students are even ready to spend more than Rs 1500 on purchasing the branded readymade garments, at the same time many of the rural students are also ready to spend Rs 1000 to 1500 per pair of readymade garments. So, it can be inferred that urban people are ready spend more on readymade garments than that of rural students. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 1. Out of 61 urban respondents 27 expressed willingness to buy the garments in the nearby city, whereas out of 48 rural respondents 33 told that they buy the garments in their native town and only very few i.e.3 respondents told that they buy in the nearby city. This may be due to proximity of distance, hassle of transportation and price difference. 2. The Chi-Square statistic (22.06) and its small significance level (p <.001) indicate that it is very unlikely that place of residence and place of purchase variables are independent of each other. Thus, we can conclude that there is a relationship between a person's place of buying and their place of residence. 3. After testing the correlation between place of residence and place of buying, the Hypothesis 2 is rejected; so, we can say that there is significant influence of one variable over the other i.e. the place of residence is influencing the place of purchase. 4. After testing the correlation between place of residence and preference of brand, the Hypothesis 3 is accepted; so, we can say that there is insignificant influence of one variable over the other i.e. the place of residence is not much influencing preference of brand. 5. After testing the correlation between place of residence and frequency of purchase, the Hypothesis 1 is accepted; so, we can say that there is insignificant influence of one variable over the other i.e. the place of residence is not much influencing frequency of purchase. 6. From the research it can be said that urban people prefer to buy readymade garments relatively more than that of rural people. 7. The research reveals that both urban and rural people prefer to buy branded garments. 8. It can be inferred from the research that urban people are ready to spend more on readymade garments than that of rural students. SCOPE FOR FUTURE RESEARCH: Customer wants and needs are different from one person to another person, this study helps to take further research on why especially the rural people are purchasing their garments in the city and which factors mainly influencing them to purchase in city in spite of good development in rural area. One can also probe on the difference between rural and urban people purchasing behavior. One can also find that if there is any difference between various brands and to identify the influence of advertisement on consumers buying behavior while choosing the brands. CONCLUSION: Consumer behavior is affected by many uncontrollable factors and influences you before you buy a product or service, namely your friends, your upbringing, your culture, the media, a role model or influences from certain groups. In this paper we attempted to identify the factors that predict rural and urban college going students buying behavior with respect to apparels using primary data from the snow ball sampling survey. The study revealed that urban students buying their garments in the city where they are living, whereas rural students buying apparel in the nearby town. Chi-square test revealed that there is a relationship between a person's place of buying and their place of residence. The place of residence of the respondents is not much influencing preference of brand. It can be concluded that urban people prefer to buy readymade garments relatively more than that of rural people, and the place of residence i.e. urban or rural is not much influencing frequency of purchase. It can also be inferred from the research that urban people are ready to spend more on readymade garments than that of rural students. > RJCBS: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 14

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