Assessment of efficacy of Consumer Lifestyles as predictor of Consumer Behaviour for purchase of Refrigerator

Abstract

Purpose: This study is an attempt to assess the efficacy of the psychographic variable in predicting the consumer behaviour for purchase of a durable product. A refrigerator has been picked for the current study assuming the high involvement of the subjects in this product.

Design/Methodology/Approach: An extensive literature study and focus group study was conducted to understand important factors impacting the buying behaviour of respondents towards the durable product category of refrigerator. It was observed that the respondents get influenced by wide variety of factors while they make their purchase decisions for a refrigerator keeping in mind their present and future needs and whether the product suits to their understanding of their status and beliefs. These factors can be grouped as external factors like demographic, social, cultural factors etc. and internal factors like need, personality, motivation etc. Data was collected on a 27 item AIO based Questionnaire selected for the study and samples were collected based on Judgmental Sampling or Purposive Sampling as in (Sexena, P. & Pathak, D.P. 2011). A keen vigil was kept to maintain the proportional presence of demographic factors 30-40 each representing approximately 4-5 lifestyle groupings (approximated through pilot study), so that some tests like Chi-Square test could not be affected. Since there were 9 demographic variables therefore approx. number of sample worked out to be the product of above three figures i.e. around 1000 samples. A total of Fourteen hundred and thirty questionnaires were collected from all the sources. However, due to incomplete responses on some questionnaires one thousand and thirty-six filled in and validated questionnaires were accepted to be used for data analysis. KMO and Bartlett’s Test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy yielded a significant figure of 0.696. The auto clustering tool of SPSS was used to find most suitable number of clusters which came to be 4. These four groups formed the four different lifestyle clusters used in the subsequent study.

Findings- Homogeneity of Variances test shows Levene statistic with p<.001 thereby rejects the null hypothesis associated with it that the people belonging to different lifestyle groups have homogeneity in their variances therefore ANNOVA either could not be employed or the results of the ANNOVA could be misleading. The non parametric equivalent of ANNOVA is Kruskal Wallis test. It does not assume homogeneity of population and test the difference of rank instead of means and the structure of the scale also support the use of non parametric test. Kruskal Wallis test with P value less than 0.001 rejects all the null Hypothesis from Hnull 1.1 to Hnull 1.9 and establishes that the people in different lifestyle do differ in their perceptions about refrigerator, measured on above parameters. The Kruskal Wallis test reinforces the results of ANNOVA. The resultant lower Chi-Square values at 3 degree of freedom in the case of Involvement in the purchase of refrigerator, motivation level of people and the Affordability/ Price level of people purchasing refrigerator, indicates the lesser difference among the groups. It can be assumed that the people in Prayagraj share, to some extent, the similar level of the perception in motivation level and involvement in purchasing the refrigerator that means the refrigerator is indeed a high involvement product. Similar is the case with Utility/ Price level perception of refrigerator and the perception of Affordability/ Price level of people purchasing refrigerator in different lifestyle group. For the people of Prayagraj it appears that the price matters relative to utility alike. The marketers must accordingly adopt the marketing strategies, sensing the complex buying behaviour of the people in Prayagraj.

Originality/value- The study would be useful to public functionaries to reach to a policy view on whether to simply transfer ownership or transfer ownership with increased competition or exposing public enterprises into competition for enhancing their efficiencies, an alternative to privatization and ownership transfer.