CHANGING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: SEGMENTING CONSUMERS TO UNDERSTAND THEM BETTER

Retailing has undergone transformation since the last decade. There has been lot of closure of retail stores which had been successful in the past. The closure of the stores are related to low footfalls in the stores. This is due to the change in the consumer behavior in the present day. Consumers have a choice to shop in any retail store as the number of stores started to multiply. It is a matter of concern to keep the consumers loyal to a store. It is important to understand consumer behavior to design proper strategies and make crucial decisions. understanding customer behavior and psychology helps segment the customers into segments based on their attitudes and buying behavior. Segmentation helps design proper segments for better policies for the target customers. The researcher here uses psychographic segmentation and behavioral segmentation variables to segment customers of a retail store. Attitudes of customer towards the store assortment, instore service, value added service, store environment, satisfaction level, store patronage and loyalty are used to segment the customers. Cluster analysis was used to segment the customers based on their responses.