QUALITY PERCEPTION OF FOOD PRODUCTS AMONG HOME MAKERS

Quality is one of the important characteristics of a product. To consumers, quality means performance, durability, service, aesthetics, reliability, features of a product. But purchasing of quality products is every one's dream. In India there are many acts to protect consumers when they face problems like food adulteration, misleading advertisement, short weights spurious products and so on. Perceiving good quality of products in today's market situation is the main concern of the consumer. Hence this study was taken to elicit information quality perception of food products among homemakers in Bangalore city. Survey method and questionnaire was the tool used to collect information. A sample of one hundred homemakers was selected through simple random sampling technique. The objectives of the study includes: to ascertain factors considered in the selection of food products, to find out the quality perception towards food products among home makers and to assess the satisfaction of product quality and purchase quality. The major findings of the study were that most of the respondents preferred newspaper as a source of information on the food products. The factors considered while purchasing food products by majority of the homemakers were quality followed by price, availability and brand. It was further found that 96 percent of the respondents remarked purity as an important aspect for a quality food product followed by taste, food hygiene and standardized marks. It was evident that, 57 percent of the respondents were highly satisfied with product quality and 43 percent of the respondents were moderately satisfied with product quality. Higher percentages of the respondents were highly satisfied with purchase quality and only 47 percent of the respondents were moderately satisfied with purchase quality. There exists a positive significant relationship between product quality and purchase quality as remarked by the respondents regarding the level of satisfaction that was found to be +0.0843. Higher the satisfaction of product quality better is the purchase quality.