BRAND INFLUENCE ON BUYING FMCG PRODUCTS IN UTTAR PRADESH: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

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1 BRAND INFLUENCE ON BUYING FMCG PRODUCTS IN UTTAR PRADESH: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY Hari Mohan Kansal Research Scholar, Shri Venkateshwara University, Gajraula, (India) Prof. (Dr.) S.P. Singh ABSTRACT This research is to evaluate the attributes which influence on consumer buying behavior and their preference in Iranian FMCG market. In this study 861 questionnaires were distributed and 401 questionnaires were returned providing a 53.4% response rate. The questionnaire used five point Likert scale. To achieve diverse response from a expand scope of ideas, age, education, income and type of occupation used; different places such as shopping center, club and university. The respondents were asked to reflect the range of the amount of impact of variables on measured variable (shampoo attributes) from very high to very low. Researcher also discovered that reinforcement, antidandruff, attractive packaging, and shiny are most important attributes to influence on consumer buying attitude in Iranian market. However the sustainability, price and quality are considered as the main reason to buy branded shampoo and it should consider as main competitive advantage strategy for branded shampoo. Keywords: Buying Behavior; Preference; Consumer Choice; Marketing Strategy; FMCG; I. INTRODUCTION Fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) constitute a large part of consumers budget in all countries. Retail trade in these products, that is, their supply to households, has attracted considerable interest from consumers and policy-makers because a well-functioning retail sector is essential for daily provision of these essential products at high quality and low cost. Fast Moving consumer Goods are products that have a quick shelf turnover, at relatively low cost and don't require a lot of thought, time and financial investment to purchase. The margin of profit on every individual FMCG product is less. However the huge number of goods sold is what makes the difference. Fast Moving Consumer Goods is a classification that refers to wide range of frequently purchased consumer products including: toiletries, soaps, cosmetics, teeth cleaning products, shaving products,detergents, and other non-durables such as glassware, bulbs, batteries, paper products and plastic goods, such as buckets. Hence this study focus on to what extent the brand influences on consumer purchase decision in U.P., where the maximum populations are expatriates. FMCG industry, alternatively called as CPG (Consumer packaged goods) industry primarily deal with the production, distribution and marketing of consumer packaged goods. The study found that many respondents attribute towards purchase Fast moving consumer goods based on price and quality. Based on the findings the research study recommends the marketers to focus on brand building exercises and to allocate increased budget for the same. Fast Moving Consumer 306 P a g e

2 Goods (FMCG) is those consumables which are normally consumed by the consumers at a regular interval. Some of the prime activities of FMCG industry are selling, marketing, financing, purchasing, etc. The industry also engaged in operations, supply chain, production and general management. 1.1 Review of Literature An attempt has been made to pursue the literature of earlier studies. Lot of studies has been conducted consumer satisfaction and consumer attitude towards FMCG products. FMCG products are the day-to-day usage of millions of people. A study on impact on buying on FMCG products helps to millions of people how they are utilizing and how they opined about it. For the purpose of review, some studies conducted on satisfaction and attitude towards FMCG products are studied. The methodology and findings of these research works had been carefully studied and analyzed by the present researcher. Useful hints were drawn from these studies which helped in putting the present research work in a proper perspective. The gist of some of the relevant research studies and research papers on FMCG products are presented in this paper. Verstraeten, D Van den Poel, A Prinzie & P Van Kenhove (2002) stated in their study that in the marketing domain, sequential patterns have been usefully deployed for predicting various aspects of customer purchase behavior. Hence, the goal of this paper was to introduce a new concept that might prove to be a relevant tool for marketing decision making rather than offering a sound solution within a clearly demarcated problem definition. As opposed to the traditional sequence-analysis approaches, in this study, an array of binary logit analyses was applied for detecting significant sequences among category purchases. In summary, it shown that (i) binary logit analysis provides a feasible alternative for detecting and selecting highly significant sequential relationships, (ii) a sequential architecture can be successfully compiled through the methodology offered in this paper, and (iii) the provided sequential architecture can be a useful tool in understanding and predicting customer behavior. Future applications possibly lie ahead in the field of inter-category management, shelf-space allocation, store-layout decisions, retailer promotions, customer profiling and individual customer predictions. Tauseef Ahmad (2011) attempt in his study that to find the variables / factors that effects customer impulse buying behavior in FMCG sector considering retail market in India. A hypothetical model has created in this paper which has been taken into consideration for the research work on impulse buying behavior of the consumers. The study is based on the primary data collected from Shopping malls, Handlooms and marts from the area of Bareilly with the help of structured questionnaire on likert scale. Data analysis has been done using SPSS software. The statistical analysis method employed in this study is Factor Analysis. After thorugh analysis of the available data, it has been found out that since income of individual is increasing and more and more people are moving towards western culture in dressing sense, in eating etc so the purchasing power of the people has really gone up and thus the impulse buying of the commodities is on a great increment mainly due to pricing strategies of retail players and full of festivals throughout the year. Khansa Zaman, Samina Bibi, Asma Arshad, Aqeel Shahzad (2012)state in their study that to find an empirical relationship of proposed variables and to find the impact of customer satisfaction, trust, and corporate reputation on customer loyalty. This study attempts to contribute to the knowledge how FMCG companies of Pakistan can retain their customers by making them loyal through satisfaction, trust, and corporate reputation. A theoretical 307 P a g e

3 framework is proposed to suggest links among variables. The sample size selected for research constitutes 200 respondents, and these respondents belong to the cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan. Multiple regression and correlation coefficient was used to examine hypothesized relationship. Regression analysis reveals that customer satisfaction, trust, and corporate reputation bring 79.0% change in customer loyalty. The results indicate that FMCG companies in Pakistan should pay more attention toward the reputation of their company, satisfaction of their customers, and trust in order to build loyalty of customers. Generalizability and time constraint are the limitations of the study. II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The purpose of this study is to find consumer buying behavior about FMCG product in U.P. market about domestic and international shampoo, In other words, the objective is to answer the following research questions. H1: To understand the most significant attributes that impact on consumer buying attitude in U.P market. H2: To understand the most important attributes which provides the customer satisfaction in consumer buying behavior in FMCG product in U.P market. H3: To discover the reason for brand switching in shampoo products. H4: There is a significant association between gender and income about the choosing the domestic or foreign product. H5: There is a significant association between gender and education about the choosing the domestic or foreign product. We started with conducting an exploratory research on U.P.consumer behavior to determine the most important attribute adopted by them. The research gradually shifted from exploratory research to quantitativeresearch. According to (Fisher, 2007), a survey approach is suitable when the researcher is trying to obtain a broad and representative overview of a situation. In this research survey method was used for data gathering. In addition to descriptive statistics, Friedman Test was used to provide a rank order with respect to the importance of the identified most important attributes. Through extensive literature review and conducting deep interviews with the experts, we have divided the questionnaire in three sections. The method of administration for questionnaires is through drop off and pick up. The first section, we asked about demographic information of the respondents, the second section, the respondents asked about the reason for buying shampoo, brand switching, types of shampoo or focused on consumer behavior and attitudes about consuming shampoo and the last part we asked about the most important components or factor which impact on consumer buying behavior in Iranian market, furthermore the questionnaire used five point Likert scale. The respondents were asked to reflect the range of the amount of impact of variables on measured variable (shampoo attributes) from very high to very low. 2.1 Sampling Size In this research, a simple random sampling was selected as the sampling method. The customers of Fmcg in Iran were sampled to respond to the questionnaires. To achieve diverse response from a expand scope of ideas, age, education, income and type of occupation used; different places such a shopping center, club, university. 308 P a g e

4 According to Fisher (2007) the number of distributed questionnaires will have to be larger than the minimum required and the response rate of 30% is considered very good. In this study 700 questionnaires were distributed and 374 questionnaires were returned providing a 53.4% response rate. 2.2 Analysis & Discussion The collected data s are analyzed with the help of statistical tools like correlation, Henry Garrett Ranking Technique, Multiple Regression. The level of satisfaction perceived by the selected sample respondents in utilizing the FMCG goods is considered as a dependent variable. The Independent variables selected for the study are Gender, Age, Marital Status, Educational Qualifications, Occupational status, Annual Income, Family size, Frequency of purchase FMCG goods P a g e

5 III. CORRELATION ANALYSIS Correlation has been applied for finding the degree of relationship or interdependence of two sets ofvariables upon each other in such a way that the changes in the value of one variable are in sympathy with thechanges in the other. The relationship between the selected independent variables and a dependent variable level of satisfaction has been measured using correlation. Table1 Correlation Between Selected Variables And Level Of Satisfaction S.No. Variables Correlation 1 Gender Age Educational Qualification Occupation Annual Income Family Size Frequency of purchase IV. CONCLUSION It is found from the correlation analysis that the variables Gender, Educational Qualification, Occupation, Annual Income,and Frequency of purchase are having positive correlation with impact on buying ofselected respondents towards FMCG products and the Family size is having negative correlation with impact on buying FMCG products. It is noted from the regression analysis that the impact on buying towards FMCG products is positively associated with their Age, Educational Qualification, Occupation, Annual Income, Family size and Frequency of purchase in the study area. 4.1 Suggestions Analyzing the information of sales promotion schemes on various FMCG products, it can be inferred that cash discount and Free gift as one type of value added sales promotion schemes widely used by marketers. It can be suggested from this research that cash discount should be used compare to free gift as a sales promotion scheme. Extending further, it can be suggested from conjoint analysis considering various attributes and their levels of sales promotion schemes value added schemes should be given preference over other types of sales promotion schemes. REFERENCES [1]. Aaker, D Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the value of a Brand Name, The Free Press, New York, NY. [2]. Aaker, D. (1991), Managing Brand Equity: New York: The Free Press. [3]. Aaker, D. (1996), Building Strong Brands, Free Press, New York, NY. [4]. Ambler, T Building Brand Relationship, December 1, Financial Times. 310 P a g e

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