THE IMPACT OF GST IMPLEMENTATION AND THE SPENDING BEHAVIOUR OF CONSUMERS ON GROCERIES IN THANJAVUR CITY – A CROSS - SECTIONAL STUDY

Abstract

GST is an indirect tax system recently implemented by the Government of India on all products and Services. This system is implemented to evade unnecessary taxes and to bring a common Tax system as followed by the rest of the countries in all over the world, so that difference between richer and poorer can be avoided. But recently this tax system has caused the buying and spending behaviour of consumers on the various goods and services consumed. Regularly usable grocery products have been selected to analyse the spending behaviour of the consumers. Though groceries are daily used in day to day life, the impact of GST implemented shows buyer’s adverse opinion on spending in it. So an attempt is made to analyse the impact of GST implementation and the spending behaviour of consumers particularly on Grocery products in Thanjavur city. A total of 75 households having sufficient purchasing power were personally surveyed with a structured questionnaire. These households are spread across Thanjavur which is a remote area. Simple statistical analysis such as descriptive statistical analysis, frequency distribution, KMO and Bartlett's Test of significance, Chi- Square Test and correlation are used to assess the consumers' preferences for grocery products and their changes in spending for its acquisition. Thus the paper has been divided into three parts (i) Concepts related to GST (ii) Research design (iii) analytical part and conclusion.