STATUS SEEKING CONSUMERS WITH REFERENCE TO FOUR WHEELER OWNERS IN COIMBATORE CITY

Customer playing the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer differ in their intention towards buying a product, some purchase for need, while some purchase for the want of status, status seeking consumers are those who give much importance to the non functional attributes of the product such as beauty, attractiveness, brand, social comparison, prestige etc than the functional attributes. Car a common means of transport is bought by people not only for the transportation purpose, it is also bought for comfort, convenience, fun, prestige/status. Analysis of car consumer behavior gains its own importance for manufacturers by knowing the actual preference, attitude of the consumers and trying to satisfy them and make the best profit out of it. The motive of this research is to analyze one of the most important consumer behaviors with regards to car that is the Status seeking consumer behavior. Analysis is done with the intention to learn the opinions, beliefs of status seeking behavior and also the perceived benefits of the behavior by the respondents with regards to car. The respondents are the salaried people of both the government and private sector in Coimbatore who owns car and they are chosen by the simple random sampling technique with a sample size of 172.One way ANOVA, Correlation and Z test were performed for the data analysis. The findings tell that there is a significant difference between different age groups and gender with regards to opinion, belief and perceived benefits about status consumption and there is no significant difference between different income groups with regards to opinions, beliefs and perceived benefits and also the respondents wish to have an unique kind of car rather than an imitated one. Respondents doesn’t think car as a motivating factor while they believe that owning a car is a sign of independence and power.