AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON ANALYZING CUSTOMER BUYING BEHAVIOR TOWARDS JCB BACKHOE LOADER MACHINE AT DECCAN SALES AND SERVICES PRIVATE LIMITED, INDORE

This study has been successfully conducted at Deccan Sales & Services Private Limited, Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Deccan Sales & Services Private Limited is an authorized distributor of Mahindra's Earth-Master backhoe loader, a mechanical excavator equipment. It draws itself a bucket attached to a hinged boom. The title of the study is, “An empirical study on analysing customer buying behaviour towards JCB backhoe loader machine at Deccan Sales & Service Private Limited”. This study is a competitor study which is based on the hypothetical market structure, a concept of competitive strategies in Marketing Management. The aim of the study is to analyse the behaviour of customers of JCB backhoe loader and to identify the factors that are considered to be significant by the customer while making the purchase decision. A relevant literature on customer behaviour related to construction equipment has been reviewed and the research gaps have been explored accordingly. The gap analysis indicated that there is a need to explore factors that influence the purchase decision of the customer while purchasing backhoe loader machine. The objective of the project has been framed to explore the factors of brand selection of JCB backhoe loader machine and check which of these explored factors are significant in determining the purchase decision of JCB Backhoe loader machine. The variables are categorised as dependent and independent variables. The factors that influence purchase decision are independent variables (Brand name, Reliability, Service support, Past experiences, Recommendation, Resale value, Productivity, Fuel consumption, Operator comfort, Less downtime Parts network) and the number of sub decisions about purchasing backhoe loader machine are considered to be dependent variables (seller and location of a store, price of the product, Warrantee of the product, payment method like credit arrangements and maintenance arrangements). Based on these variables identified in the literature review, a questionnaire was made for primary data collection. A 5 Point Likert Scale has been used to record the responses of the customers. The questionnaire has been administered to JCB backhoe loader customer in Indore region only. A simple random sampling method was used to categorized the responses from the entire population of JCB backhoe loader customers in Madhya Pradesh region, India. According to the sample size calculation obtained through a pilot study of first 90 responses, this survey has been conducted a total of 325 respondents (owners of JCB backhoe loader machine). The research methodologies that were adopted to accomplish the objective was exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression. A statistical tool namely SPSS was used to do the required computation and calculations. The analysis of data revealed through Varimax rotated component matrix that the three factors explored are basic requirements of the machine, brand image and productivity & spare parts availability respectively. All these three factors have also been found to be significant in determining the purchase decision through multiple regression. However, their strength of association is found out 53.5%, which could be improved by a few additional variables.