Chapter 3 Review of Literature

A literature review is a "critical analysis of a segment of a published body of

knowledge through summary, classification and comparison of prior research studies,
and theoretical articles". To get a proper perspective of the subject, it is essential to
have bird‟s eye outlook on the findings of other academic scholars or research
scholars. A thorough analysis of literature should be done prior the planning and
execution of any research in the relevant sector as it removes the probability or
likelihood of avoidable replication of the efforts, helps to get acquaint with the work
done and provides valuable information on research techniques. The aim of literature
review is to show that "the writer has studied existing work in the field of insight".

Kim et al (2003) examined the behavioral model of online consumer behavior for
shopping online for clothing and mainly apparel. Result showed positive relationship
among attitude and subjective norms involves that behavioral intention is not a
functions of independent set of attitudinal and normative variables but of a set of
interdependence between these variables. Finding f the study shows that attitude of
the consumer play major role for online consumer behavior for buying.

According to Michael R.Solomon, & Nancy J.Rabolt (2004), consumer behavior is

the study of the processes involved when individuals or groups, select, purchase, use
or dispose of products, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy needs and desires.
Sproles and Kendall (1986) developed a model to determine consumer‟s decision
making behavior with right consumer physiological orientation variables viz, brand
consciousness, perfectionism consciousness, impulsive and careless consumer,
confused by over choice consumer, novelty and fashion consciousness, habitual and
brand loyal consumer, choice consumer, recreational and hedonic shopping
consciousness and price and value consciousness.

Park J.H and Lenon, S.J. (2004) examined the research study showed about impact
of television on apparel shopping online and offline. Finding of the study shows that
there are positive relationship between television impact and apparel shopping while
buying.

According to Dolekoglu et al. (2008), examined the research in their study that the
there are following factors impact the consumer buying behavior are price,
advertising, quality of the product, sales promotion, brand image and celebrity
endorsement.

A Study on Online Buying Behaviour in Fashion and Apparel Industry Page 20

According to Jin and Kang (2010) studies purchase intention toward foreign brand
jeans using four antecedents viz. face saving, attitude, perceived behavior control and
subjective norms and found the results that face saving, attitude, perceived behavior
control have significance effect of purchase intention where as individual norms has
not significant impact toward purchase intention.

P. Vikkraman and N. Sumathi (2010) examined the purchase behavioral in Indian

apparel market and the study that the factors impact clothing while purchasing apparel
in India. Perceived quality and emotional value are the other essential predictors of
the purchase intention.

Figure 3: Porter’s Diamond Model for Indian Apparel Sector

(Adapted from Mann and Byun, 2011)

3.1 Literature Review Related to Consumer Buying Behavior

Consumers can either be subjective or objective, testing the persuasiveness of brand

names. Retail stores selling the products also play an important role in swaying the
decisions of consumers. The whole package or visual appeal of the retail outlet can
determine sales, or the service of the sales ladies or the clerks ( Aaker, D. J.
&Joachimsthaler, E ,2000) Furthermore, consumers may choose particular
products/brands not only because these products provide the
functional or performance benefits expected, but also because products can be used to
express consumers‟ personality, social status or affiliation (symbolic purposes) or to
fulfil their internal psychological needs, such as the need for change or newness.

Consumer behaviour refers to the mental and emotional process and the observable
behaviour of consumers during searching, purchasing and post consumption of a
productor service. Consumer behaviour involves study of how people buy, what they
buy, when they buy and why they buy. It blends the elements from Psychology,
Sociology, Socio psychology, Anthropology and Economics (Bhattacharya, C.B. &
Sen, S., 2003) It also tries to assess the influence on the consumer from groups such
as family, friends, reference groups and society in general.

3.1.1 Consumer Buying Decision Process

Consumer buying decision process is the process undertaken by consumer in regard to

a potential market transaction before, during and after the purchase of a product or
service. Consumer decision making process generally involves five stages:

Figure 4: Perceived usefulness

Problem Recognition

Purchase decision making process begins when a buyer becomes aware of an

unsatisfied need or problem. This is the vital stage in buying decision process,
because without recognizing the need or want, an individual would not seek to buy
goods or service

Information Search
After the consumer has recognized the need, he / she will try to find the means to
solve that need. First he / she will recall how he used to solve such kind of problem in
the past, this is called nominal decision making. Secondly, consumer will try to solve
the problem by asking a friend or goes to the market to seek advice for which product
will best serve his need, this is called limited decision making.

Alternatives evaluation

Consumers evaluate criteria referring to various dimensions; features, characteristics

and benefits that a consumer desires to solve a certain problem. Product features and
its benefit is what influence consumer to prefer that particular product. The consumer
will decide which product to buy from a set of alternative products depending on each
unique feature that the product offers and the benefit he / she can get out of that
feature.

Purchase Action

This stage involves selection of brand and the retail outlet to purchase such a product.
Retail outlet image and its location are important. Consumer usually prefers a nearby
retail outlet for minor shopping and they can willingly go to a faraway store when
they purchase items which are of higher values and which involve higher sensitive
purchase decision. After selecting where to buy and what to buy, the consumer
completes the final step of transaction by either cash or credit.

Post-purchase Actions

Consumer favourable post-purchase evaluation leads to satisfaction. Satisfaction with

the purchase is basically a function of the initial performance level expectation and
perceived performance relative to those expectations. Consumer tends to evaluate
their wisdom on the purchase of that particular product. This can result to consumer
experiencing post purchase dissatisfaction (Belk, R.W.,1988) If the consumer‟s
perceived performance level is below expectation and fail to meet satisfaction this
will eventually cause dissatisfaction, and so the brand and/ or the outlet will not be
considered by the consumer in the future purchases. This might cause the consumer to
initiate complaint behaviour and spread negative word-of-mouth concerning that
particular product.
3.1.2 Factors Affecting Consumer Buying Behaviour

Consumer buying behaviour is influenced by the major three factors:

A. Social Factors

B. Psychological Factors

B. Personal Factors.

A. Social Factors

Social factors refer to forces that other people exert and which affect consumers‟
purchase behaviour. These social factors can include culture and subculture, roles and
family, social class and reference groups (Belk, R.W., 1988)

B. Psychological Factors

These are internal to an individual and generate forces within that influence her/his
purchase behavior. The major forces include motives, perception, learning, attitude
and personality (DeBono, K. G., 2000)

C. Personal Factors

These include those aspects that are unique to a person and influence purchase
behavior. These factors include demographic factors, lifestyle, and situational factors
(Bloch, P. H., Brunel, F. F., & Arnold, T. J., 2003)

3.1.3 Influence of Branding on Consumer Buying Behavior

A brand is a name, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes a seller's goods or

services in the marketplace. A brand is a name, sign, symbol, slogan or anything that
is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service or business (Fournier, S.,
1998)

Rending or Careful brand management seeks to make the product or services relevant
to the target audience. Therefore cleverly crafted advertising campaigns can be highly
successful in convincing consumers to pay remarkably high prices for products which
are inherently extremely cheap to make (Fournier, S., 1998) This concept, known as
creating value, essentially consists of manipulating the projected image of the product
so that the consumer sees the product as being worth the amount that the advertiser
wants him/her to see, rather than a more logical valuation that comprises an aggregate
of the cost of raw materials, plus the cost of manufacture, plus the cost of distribution
(Fournier, S., 1998)

3.1.4 Influence of Brand Preference on Consumer Buying Behavior

Brand preference refers to Selective demand for a company's brand rather than a
product; the degree to which consumers prefer one brand over another. In an attempt
to build brand preference advertising, the advertising must persuade a target audience
to consider the advantages of a brand, often by building its reputation as a long-
established and trusted name in the industry. If the advertising is successful, the target
customer will choose the brand over other brands in any category (Elliot,R.
&Wattanasuwan, K., 1998)

Brand preference refers to Measure of brand loyalty in which a consumer will choose
a particular brand in presence of competing brands, but will accept substitutes if that
brand is not available. A Primary advertising/promotional objective is to establish a
situation in which a particular brand is regarded as more desirable than its
competitors. It is a brand prerequisite of a first sale

Whereas brand loyalty is necessary for repeat purchases. The stage of brand loyalty at
which a particular buyer will select a particular brand, but will choose competitor‟s
brand, if the preferred brand is unavailable (De Chernatony, L., 1999)

People have limited time, memory and attention. So when they make buying
decisions, they simplify their choices. ''On the shelf you may have 30, 40 brands of
shampoo, or 20, 30 brands of toothpaste,'' explained Jagdish N. Sheth, a marketing
professor at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University. But consumers don't
take the time to examine every possible choice (Carman, J. M., 1978)Rather, they
reduce their selection to a smaller set of options, based on experience and exposure.
''Through learning over time, consumers are really efficient in terms of reducing their
transaction costs,'' Professor Sheth said.

In the 1960's, he and John A. Howard, the Columbia University marketing scholar
who died in 1999, developed the idea of the ''evoked set'' to describe this process of
selection. Shoppers start not with every single brand they are dimly aware of but with
a group of options -- the evoked set -- uppermost in their minds. ''An evoked set
consists of the brands in a product category that the consumer remembers at the time
of decision making,'' according to ''Marketing: Best Practices,'' a textbook edited by
K. Douglas Hoffman.

Ask a grocery shopper to name toothpaste brands, for instance, and you'll probably
hear ''Crest and Colgate.'' Only when pressed to name others will the shopper come up
with, say, Rembrandt and Mentadent. Crest and Colgate are the evoked set, the one
from which most shoppers will choose to buy -- especially if they aren't looking at
snappy product displays for other brands. The downside of this process is that the
results depend on exactly how we sort the possibilities into categories (DeBono, K.
G., &Harnish, R. J., 1988)

''The way this information is recorded in memory can influence consumers' preference
for brands and whether the brand will be considered for purchase,'' Barbara E. Kahn
and Leigh McAlister, two marketing professors, wrote in ''Grocery Revolution''
(Addison Wesley, 1997). If, for instance, a store arranges yogurt first by brand (like
Dannon and Yoplait) and then by flavor within each brand, consumers will tend to
select their flavors from the same brand.

On the other hand, the authors write, ''If the products had been displayed with all the
strawberry yogurts together, then all the lemon-lime yogurts, and so forth, consumers
would most likely choose which flavors they wanted first, and then choose which
brand name they would most like for that particular flavor.'' Similarly, American
supermarkets display meats by animal type -- beef, chicken, pork, etc. -- and then by
cut. In Australia, by contrast, grocers arrange meats by the way they might be cooked,
and stores use more descriptive labels, like ''a 10- minute herbed beef roast.'' The
result is that Australians buy a greater variety of meats. How we classify goods
changes how we make consumer choices (De Chernatony, L., 1999) ''The
composition of the set of final possibilities can have subtle effects on choice,'' write
Professor Kahn of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and
Professor McAlister of the University of Texas at Austin. As a result, ''brand choices
can be influenced without changing the actual preference for a brand per se, but
merely by changing the content of the consideration set.''
3.1.5 Brand Loyalty: The Positive Consumer Perception

What drives brand loyalty? The psychology behind human behavior as it pertains to
brand selection can be both rudimentary and complicated at the same time. In order to
understand the psychology of brand preference, it is necessary to understand:

 A basic communications model and the process of receiving/filtering

messages.
 A distinction between spurious and true brand loyalty.
 Several truisms concerning how a brand is positioned in the marketplace
revealed the challenges with marketing to the human mind.
 Finally, research that submits the essence of brands is connected through our
five senses.

The culmination of this information may help any organization facing brand loyalty
issues with their constituents and provide resources to uncover core issues (Eagly, A.
H., &Chaiken, S., 1993)

3.1.6 Influence of Brand Positioning on Creating Consumer Perception

"A strong brand position means the brand has a unique, credible, sustainable, and
valued place in the consumer's mind. It revolves around a benefit that helps your
product or service stand apart from the competition.” Scott Davis, Brand Asset
Management.

Organizations seek to develop and project brand perceptions based on internally

driven needs and goals. In Jack Trout's book "Differentiate or Die,” he presents
evidence that supports his theories on consumer behavior and interpretation. Although
these concepts seem self-evident on the surface, organizations tend to ignore these
immutable laws in their daily branding activities (Elliot, R. &Wattanasuwan, K.,
1998)

3.1.7 Consumer Perception across Genders

Gender differences are observed as male adolescents display more favorable attitudes
towards stores, greater consumer affairs knowledge, more materialistic values, and
stronger social motivations for consumption. On the other hand, females show more
favorable attitudes towards advertising and score significantly higher on information
seeking and cognitive differentiation measures.

In general, female children have stronger influence in family purchase decisions and
use influence strategies such as reasoning, asking, and persuading more frequently
than boys (Schultz, M., & de Chernatony, L., 2002) Sundberg reported that Indian
girls perceived their families as significantly more cohesive than Indian boys;
however, the absolute difference was not great. Sex differences in decision making
were also found to be stronger in India than in America.

3.1.8 Consumer Perception and Sales Promotion

Sales Promotion refers to short term incentives to encourage purchase or sale of a

product or a service. It is estimated that in consumer packaged goods industries, 74%
of marketing expenditures is made on sales promotion. Following are the tools of
sales promotion:

1. Consumer tools:

Samples, coupons, cash refunds, price packs, premiums, advertising specialties,

patronage rewards, point of purchase displays and materials, contests sweepstakes

2. Trade promotions:

Discounts, allowance, push money, specialty advertising items, business promotions,

convention and trade shows, and sales contests.

3. Public relations: building up a good corporate image, handling unfavourable

rumours, press relations, product publicity, public affairs, lobbying, investor relations,
news, speeches, special events, mobile marketing, published materials, website public
service activities (Kotler, Philip, Neil Rackham, and SujKrishnaswamy, 2006)

3.1.9 Consumer Perception & Visual Merchandising

Visual means serving, resulting from, or pertaining to the sense of sight, capable of
being seen by the eye, optical, having the nature of or producing a image in the mind.
Merchandising means to promote the sale of, as by advertising or display. (Bloch, P.
H., Brunel, F. F., & Arnold, T. J., 2003)
Visual Merchandising includes combining products, environments, and spaces into a
stimulating and engaging display to encourage the sale of a product or service. It has
become such an important element in retailing that a team effort involving the senior
management, architects, merchandising managers, buyers, the visual merchandising
director, designers, and staff is needed. Visual merchandising starts with the store
building itself. The management then decides

on the store design to reflect the products the store is going to sell and how to create a
warm, friendly, and approachable atmosphere for its potential customers (Keller,
K.L., 2003)

There are eight key components of store design and visual merchandising:

Image, Layout, Merchandise presentation, Signing and graphics, Display, Lighting,

Floor, ceiling, fixtures and walls, Peripherals – colours, music and video, smell and
cleanliness

Tools of Visual Merchandising: Windows, Focal point, High point, Promotional

tables, Signages (Bloch, P. H., Brunel, F. F., & Arnold, T. J., 2003)

Role of Visual Merchandising on Consumer Buying Behavior

Retail professionals display to make the shopping experience more comfortable,

convenient and customer friendly by:

 Making it easier for the shopper to locate the desired category and
merchandise.
 Making it easier for the shopper to self-select.
 Making it possible for the shopper to co-ordinate & accessorize.
 Informing about the latest fashion trends by highlighting them at strategic
locations.

3.1.10 Influence of Visual Merchandising on Consume Buying Behavior

Consumer expects to spend less time for shopping and prefers one step multi brand
retail formats and hence significance of visual merchandising is on increase. As per
the opinion of Hemendra Mathur, senior consultant of KSA technopak based on the
third annual consumer outlook study that the consumer is getting time saved and the
time spent on shopping (both grocery and non grocery) has come down. Further the
study reveals that visual merchandising helps in the increase of impulse buying.

Market analysts feel that most companies are unfortunately not spending as much
time and money as they should on POS (point of sales) visual merchandising as a
strategic tool for brand building, indiscriminately "displaying everything rather than
displaying selectively and effectively to assist consumer in taking decisions. Visual
merchandising is silent selling; it helps in increase of sales and projecting a required a
brand image to the target audience.

Status of Visual Merchandising in India

Unlike the western countries, where Visual merchandising receives highest priority in
commercial planning of a product, the Indian industry understands and practice of the
concept of Visual merchandising is inadequate. With phasing out of quantitative
restrictions after the year 2004, the textile industry will have to compete purely on the
competitive edge of the products and Visual merchandising will be a helpful tool in
projecting the uniqueness of the products and thereby increasing the market access
and sales. It is high time that the Indian textile and clothing industry, therefore,
understands and adopts the scientific and professional system of Visual
merchandising rather than the traditional practices of display of products and
communication (McCracken, G., 1986)

3.1.11 Role of Pricing in Creating Consumer Perception

Price sensitivity is an important aspect in the market today, as an average consumer

would definitely prefer a product that is cheaper than a product which is above his
budget. Although brand image comes into picture, but it‟s the money quotient that
plays the key factor in the consumer behavior. It is the pricing of the product that
influences the consumer to go ahead and pick up a product that he desires (Richins,
M. L., & Dawson, S, 1992)

Choices made by consumers new to a market are driven by two competing forces:
consumers‟ desire to collect information about alternatives and their aversion to trying
risky ones. These forces give rise to three stages of purchasing: an information
collection stage that focuses initially on low-risk, big brand names; a stage in which
information collection continues but is extended to lesser-known brands; and a stage
of information consolidation leading to preference for the brands that provide the
greatest utility. The authors use a logic-mixture model with time-varying parameters
to capture the choice dynamics of different consumer segments. The results show the
importance of accounting for product experience and learning when studying the
dynamic choice processes of consumers new to a market. Insights from this study can
help marketers tailor their marketing activities as consumers gain purchasing
experience (SimQes, C. &Dibb, S., 2001)

A consumer has his own framework in his mind. He tries a new product keeping in
mind two factors-

 The consumers desire to collect information about alternatives

 Their aversion to trying risky ones.

Thus when a consumer is new to the market he will definitely want to try out new
products, which means risking and the other factor involves the information that he
has collected from the market which lead to his brand preference. After experiencing
different products only then will he be choosing a brand as per his want and
preference (Snyder, M., & Gangestad, S., 1986)

3.1.12 Importance of Pricing in Consumer buying Behavior

When marketers talk about what they do as part of their responsibilities for marketing
products, the tasks associated with setting price are often not at the top of the list.
Marketers are much more likely to discuss their activities related to promotion,
product development, market research and other tasks that are viewed as the more
interesting and exciting parts of the job. (Reda, Susan, 2001)Yet pricing decisions can
have important consequences for the marketing organization and the attention given
by the marketer to pricing is just as important as the attention given to more
recognizable marketing activities.

3.1.13 Role of Brand Preference and Brand Image in Consumer Perception

People begin to develop perception at an early age. Various products exist in a market
and consumers have a wide variety to choose from. Substitutes exist in large numbers.
This is where brand preference comes into play along with brand image (Shapiro,
Benson, 2002)
Comparatives are used between different brands to increase their sales or brand
preference. This is because of various strategies pre decided and plans by the
company. Pricing, promotional deals and product availability all have tremendous
impact on the position of your brand in the consumer‟s preference set. It takes time,
however, and constant revaluation to build positive perception which in turn leads to
brand preference. (Neuborne, Ellen, 2003)

3.1.14 Influence of Brand Name on Consumer Buying Behavior

In the present developing and modern day world, consumerism has dominated all the
aspects of life. The life in the society follows the pattern of the capitalist culture
where the human values have a different measure, you are known by what you have
not by what you are. This naturally leads to the life in a society where everyone wants
to have a unique place in the society, by possessing the things which sets them apart
from the rest of people in the society. In present society and living way, the Brands
not only represent the symbol of the company or product but to a larger extent define
the general life of a person. What the person uses can reflect his taste of life, his status
in the society, his economic background and many other things. This makes a deep
connection between the company and its brand, with the consumer. In this two way
relation both are 47 dependent on each other for various different reasons (Blatberg,
Robert, Gary Getz, Jacquelyn Thomas, and Loan M. Steinauer, 2002)

In today‟s time customers are very deeply connected to the brands. When they
purchase any product like a car, mobile, items of daily need, brand name influence the
consumer‟s choice. Some customers purchase the specific branded hings just due to
the brand name. Customers believe that brand name is a symbol of quality. I found
this interesting and wanted to find out whether brand name influences the consumer
choice when they go for purchasing any product. I chose to for the specific product
because this is one of the products which got my attention because of many reasons.
Initially the car production was dominated by few companies and one or two
countries. With the time, the market started to grow and once considered to be
luxurious commodity, cars became a need rather than a choice. This increased the
demand and with that many more companies entered the arena to have their share of
profit and exploit the growing market. This made the companies to put more efforts
and money to creating brand awareness of their product (Subramaniam, M.,
Venkatraman, N., 2001)

3.1.15 Influence of Brand Ambassadors on Consumer Perception

When you recognize a chocolate bar as „Dairy Milk‟ and noodles as „Maggi‟,
you have made a contribution to a brand manager‟s success by recognising the
brand‟s name that represents the product. If you can build a powerful brand, you will
have a powerful marketing program. If you can‟t then all the advertising, fancy
packaging, sales promotion and public relations in the world won‟t help you
achieve your objective.” (Aronson, E., Wilson, T.D. and Akert, R.M., 2005) The
very first thing that strikes our mind when we hear the word „fast food‟ is either a
pizza from Pizza Hut, burger from McDonald‟s. The same thing happens when we
think of toothpaste, the first thing that strikes our mind is the brand Colgate or in soft
drink as Coca- cola. These brand names are just fitted in our mind‟s dictionary to
represent the product itself; this is the basic goal where the brand management
concept works.

Brand management consultant, Mr. Ritvik Motwani says, “There is tough competition
in the market nowadays, so if a particular brand has to survive in the market, it should
be designed, packed and presented in such a way that a product carves a permanent
niche in the consumer‟s mind. Brand management is all about furnishing innovative
and creating effective strategies and marketing techniques which may create a
standing for the product during fierce market competition (Gupta, Monica, 2007)

According to Mr. AshishBhasin, Director- IMAG Lintas, “Brand management begins

with the conceptualisation of any product; it requires teamwork with a perfect
marketing plan that aims at a typical consumer segment. Besides this, we conduct a
market survey in advance to get consumer reactions. Next, we establish brand identity
in the market by communicating directly with the consumers on how the brand would
satisfy them in terms of their requirements. This process is then developed with
assertive promotions and campaigning using various media and non-media
platforms.” (Dwarika Prasad and Gandhi, Amrita V., 2007)

Brand management requires planning, developing, and directing marketing strategies.

It includes refining the brand‟s quintessence; as a brand manager one hould first
identify the competitors brand building strategies and should be smart enough to face
potential threats by the competitors before launching your company‟s product
(Erdem, Oumlil and Tuncalp , 1999)