Article
Retail Store Categorization and Patronage Behavior among Rural Consumers in India
Journal of Business and Retail Management Research
(2010)
Abstract
The rural population of India is about 70.2% of the total population. Close to 137,747,384 households
reside in more than 0.6 million villages in India. In the last decade spending power of this rural
population has been increasing and its attitude and lifestyle have undergone significant alterations.
As a result of these transformations, the retail habits and store patronage behavior of the population is
also changing. Although retailing in India has traditionally been an unorganized sector, especially in
rural markets, that is changing as well. This study focuses on existing retail formats in rural markets
in India. The study has two goals: to develop a classification system for these retail formats and then
to examine the preferences of segments within the current rural Indian population for the different
types of retail formats.
Specifically, the following research questions are addressed:
What are the categories of retail stores available in rural markets?
Are there descriptors that identify segments which vary in preference across the retail store categories
identified?
The study helps understanding of the different types of formats existing in the rural markets and the
characteristics of segments who patronize the various formats, which can ultimately be helpful to
classify the retail stores into different categories for the purpose of systematic study and analysis in
the future. This will be extremely helpful to the industry looking at the fast changing preferences of
rural consumers and the increasing competition in the retail industry.Â
Keywords
- Rural Consumer,
- Rural India,
- Store Categorization,
- Retail Formats.
Disciplines
Publication Date
October, 2010
Publisher Statement
2010. The Journal of Business and Retail Management Research.
Citation Information
Nripendra Singh. "Retail Store Categorization and Patronage Behavior among Rural Consumers in India" Journal of Business and Retail Management Research Vol. 5 Iss. 1 (2010) p. 29 - 40 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/nripendra-singh/3/
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY International License.