Indian Middle Class And Shopping Essay

For the current generation of consumers, the meaning of shopping has changed. It is not just a mere necessity, as it was earlier, but much more than that. The factors that affect store choice and draw customers to the shopping centre include space, ambience, and convenience and moreover an array of choice under one roof. The growth of integrated shopping malls, retail chains and multi-brand outlets is evidence of consumer behaviour being favourable to the growing organized segment of the business. Space, ambience and convenience are beginning to play an important role in drawing customers. Malls, which are now anchored by large outlets such as Westside and Lifestyle and are resided by a lot of Indian and international brands, are also being seen as image benchmarks for communities. Today retailing in India is done through a vast number of unorganized retailers with over 12 million retails outlets spread across the country in various sizes and formats. India has the largest retail density with 9 stores available for every 1000 people. The Indian retail industry is providing 8% of the countries employment with its vast distribution of retail stores across the country. The retailing in India is undergoing a gradual change as market conditions and technological developments combined with affluent, highly mobile and time starved consumers are playing an important role in the changes happening in the retail sector in India. Marketplaces in urban demographic settings attract large number of buyers and sellers, which can be termed as market thickness. Co-existence of many shopping malls along with traditional markets in a marketplace causes market congestion. The co-existence of street markets and the rise of shopping malls have been major trends of retailing in developing countries for decades. However, the increasing emphasis on growing cities with contemporary marketplaces have induced shift of agglomeration format (AF) from a marketing perspective, including the consumer preferences on routes to market. There are some generic similarities and conceptual differences between street markets and shopping malls. The AF-specific characteristics perceived by consumers lead to the change in consumer behavior towards markets preferences for shopping. In centrally managed and enclosed shopping centers in the retailing sector, eight underlying factors of varying character that drive customer satisfaction are selection of market outlet, atmosphere, convenience, sales people, refreshments, location, promotional activities and merchandising policy. FACTORS THAT AFFECT / INFLUENCE CONSUMERS BEHAVIOUR TO BUY IN MALLS. A person is likely to be influenced in making his/ her purchase decisions if he/ she is accompanied by another individual while making a shopping trip. There are many factors that play a vital role in consumers â€Å"decision making†. Some of the prominent among the factors are the image of the store, risk associated with the consumers in purchasing the product and the price perception of consumers on the store or about the product category. Store image contain by many elements like the stores opening and closing time, the availability. The risk factor plays an important role in making the decisions for the product that are new or untried by the consumers so far. Perceived risk is the expected negative utility associated with the purchase of a particular brand.