Change in Consumer Behaviour
Paper Title- Changing consumer behavior for mobile phones in rural India
Author Name- Rohit Anand
Affiliation- Student, Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna 1. Introduction
Rural India is known for its vivid diversity. With 6, 38,000 villages; India houses world’s largest rural population. India has 711.6 million rural population and 132.4 million rural households which comprise of 70% of total Indian population. The peculiar thing about this population is that their consumption pattern is evolving day by day. Many of the urban products are making their ways to rural market. Mobile phone is one such product. As urban market is getting saturated, marketers are looking at rural market as an option to grow their market share. 2. Literature review
According to study done by researchers in this area so far, rural consumers emphasise on price and the features available in the mobile while making a choice for mobile phone. Despite of low income and lack of knowledge of technology, they are fascinated by the advanced features of mobile phones. They look for optimum utilization of money.
There is a shift in the consumption pattern during the mid-1980s in both the rural and the urban sectors. For the lowest expenditure class in the rural sector, the shift is away from food items. Nowadays, rural youth are expending on lifestyle products. The expenditure on entertainment has increased considerably. Researches show that consumption pattern of a household, in general, is affected by several factors, which may be of economic and non-economic in nature. Economical factors like income and occupation and non economical factors like gender age; determine the consumption pattern of an individual. 3. Research methodology
Based on the findings from existing literature, the impact of demographic variables, say age, personal income, family income, family size and occupation; on the consumer behaviour for mobile phones was studied. Apart from this, effect of price of the
Author Name- Rohit Anand
Affiliation- Student, Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna 1. Introduction
Rural India is known for its vivid diversity. With 6, 38,000 villages; India houses world’s largest rural population. India has 711.6 million rural population and 132.4 million rural households which comprise of 70% of total Indian population. The peculiar thing about this population is that their consumption pattern is evolving day by day. Many of the urban products are making their ways to rural market. Mobile phone is one such product. As urban market is getting saturated, marketers are looking at rural market as an option to grow their market share. 2. Literature review
According to study done by researchers in this area so far, rural consumers emphasise on price and the features available in the mobile while making a choice for mobile phone. Despite of low income and lack of knowledge of technology, they are fascinated by the advanced features of mobile phones. They look for optimum utilization of money.
There is a shift in the consumption pattern during the mid-1980s in both the rural and the urban sectors. For the lowest expenditure class in the rural sector, the shift is away from food items. Nowadays, rural youth are expending on lifestyle products. The expenditure on entertainment has increased considerably. Researches show that consumption pattern of a household, in general, is affected by several factors, which may be of economic and non-economic in nature. Economical factors like income and occupation and non economical factors like gender age; determine the consumption pattern of an individual. 3. Research methodology
Based on the findings from existing literature, the impact of demographic variables, say age, personal income, family income, family size and occupation; on the consumer behaviour for mobile phones was studied. Apart from this, effect of price of the
References: * Das, V. M. “Consumer issues in development: A perspective in studying Indian rural consumers”, 1987 * Jain A., Hundal B. S.; 2007; “Asia-Pacific Journal of Rural Development”; Vol. 17 Issue 1, p17-28 * Viswanathan B.; 2001; “Applied Economics”;Vol. 33 Issue 9, p1187-1200 * Sarangi P., Panda, B. K.; 2011; “ Journal of Management Research”; Vol. 10 Issue 2, p53-72 * Pal S., Kynch J.; 2000; “Applied Economics”;, Vol. 32 Issue 12, p1559-1573