Title: The viability of benefit segmentation in Tier-II cities of India - identifying benefits sought by Indian customers

Authors: Anushree Tandon; Ashish Gupta; Vibhuti Tripathi

Addresses: School of Management Studies, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Teliarganj, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh-211004, India ' Department of Business Management, Dr. Hari Singh Gour Central University, Near Nepal Palace, New Building, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, 470003, India ' School of Management Studies, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Teliarganj, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh-211004, India

Abstract: The Indian retail industry has been affected by numerous changes, one of which is the evolving behaviour of Indian customers. Customers are no longer shy to express the benefits they seek from retail environments and are driven towards stores which meet their individual needs. The purpose of this paper is to understand the benefits sought by Tier II city customers from retailers. An extensive literature review was conducted to identify variables for the study which were incorporated into a structured questionnaire. The instrument was administered via a store intercept survey among department store shoppers in Indian Tier II cities of Allahabad and Kanpur. The data was analysed with exploratory factor analysis to identify specific benefits desired by the customers from the store. These benefits may be used by retailers for the purpose of segmentation and build a unique, differentiated positioning platform to attract/retain customers.

Keywords: retail industry; benefit segmentation; shopping; department stores; India; Tier II cities; customer benefits; retailing; customer attraction; customer retention.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2016.076764

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2016 Vol.10 No.4, pp.501 - 518

Received: 02 Jan 2014
Accepted: 07 Mar 2014

Published online: 01 Jun 2016 *

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