PACKAGING INFLUENCING CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR OF FOOD PRODUCTS IN COIMBATORE CITY

Abstract

Marketing stimuli can significantly impact consumers and attract them to buy products in which packaging plays major role in buying decisions. Objective of packaging is basically to protects the product and companies use this as an instrument of marketing the product to enhance their sales.  Companies are well aware buying process of consumers influenced basically through packaging, and particularly food products is an important element in consumer purchase behavior. Though, brand image, labelling, quality and price play significant role, the major attraction of consumers to immediately select a food product is its decoration and packaging.  Therefore, it is important to find how far packaging influenced consumers buying behavior of food products in Coimbatore? In this context, the objective is to study the packaging influencing consumer’s buying behaviour of food products in Coimbatore City. The researcher used convenience sampling method. The researcher used primary and secondary data to collect the details from the respondents.   The sample size of this study consists of 135 consumers.  Tools used are Percentage Method, Weighted Average, Garrett Ranking Method and Chi-Square Test. Result shows satisfaction towards packaging influencing consumers buying behaviour of food products shows 1st rank towards “Attractive Packaging influences me to buy the food product” and last rank for “Label of the package is important during my buying process”. It is found that association between demographic variables and satisfaction towards packaging, out of five demographics viz. age, gender, education, occupation and monthly family income, statistical significance is achieved only between gender and satisfaction to reject H0(1b) , whereas, there no association between the demographics such as age, education, occupation, monthly income and satisfaction towards packaging to support H0(1a), H0(1c), H0(1d) and H0(1e) null hypothesis respectively. it is recommended that the producers can package the food products that will attract the consumers based on colour, dimensions of the packaging, quality of the packing material, safety of the packed food product are necessarily be considered by the top consumer based food manufacturing companies. It is concluded that majority of the consumers are highly satisfied and satisfied and are also influenced by packaging in buying food products in Coimbatore district.