ABSTRACT In this project I considered most common factors influencing the buying behavior of consumers on bike.

A set of close ended questions in the form of questionnaire is used to find the level of importance of each factor. Conclusive research design in applies and descriptive research is done using factor analysis with the help of spss software. Sample size considered is 65.

1.INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background Throughout the centuries man has striven to expand his capabilities through the use of machine. His ever inventive mind has constantly devised ways to use tool to increase his abilities to explore the world around him. To go faster, deeper, higher and further than before was it. Coupled with his need to find new thrills, new adventures and new modes of transportation, the invention refinement of the motorcycle seems an inevitable outcome.

It would seem that Michelangelo conceived of the bicycle as early 14th century. And his drawing shows a remarkable resemblance to he modern day bike. It had wheels of similar size and even pedals and chain. Albeit made without any apparent means of steering.

Through never built, it was a remarkably clever design, and early bicycle makers would have done well to study his concepts, there have, in fact been 4 machines built based on his drawing, attesting to the viability of his design. It wasnt until 1869 that the first serious attempts were made to produce motor driven bicycles These very first were powered by steam, and driven by leather belts or as in the case of the roper steam velocipede of 1869 by a system of levers attached to a crank on the driven wheel.

In 1885 the Daimler, Europe this is consider by many as the first true motorcycle or motor bicycle, as it was the first to employ an internal combustion engine and was designed from the ground up to be motor powered. Designed by gottlibe Daimler it was powered by an Otto cycle engine producing about horse powers. Note this design again employed wooden wheels and Daimler dropped the twist grip controls from his 1877 design in favor of leavers on the frame.

In 1894, Hildebrand and Wolfmuller, France Worlds produce first motorcycle. It came with a 1428 cc water cooled four-stroke motor producing 2.5 bhp. And speed of 25 mph.

In 1898 orient-Aster, USA the American made production motorcycle was this entry built by the Metz Company, in Waltham, mass, it used an aster engine that was a French copy of the Metz Company, in Waltham, mass.

1.2 Two wheelers in India

Bikes or two wheelers in India cater to various needs of the consumers. With the choice of the Indians improving from bicycles to two wheelers, the Indian two-wheeler market has seen a significant growth over the years. Now owing a bike has become a must for most Indians. Even if people own a car they prefer to have a bike as it is very economical and fuel efficient.

With the growth in the economy the demand for two wheelers is increasing over the years. It is one of the most dynamic industries today and with the increasing competition companies are bringing in new products with sophisticated technologies and innovative features to capture a major pie of the Indian market and its the consumer who is benefited from it..

With the availability of reduced consumer loans and high disposable income the Indian twowheeler industry has perceived an exceptional growth over the past few years thereby making India the second largest market for two wheelers in the world only after China.

The motorcycle has now become one most popular mode of transportation among the Indian middle class families because of it is cost effective, economical and easy to navigate through the traffic. Moreover, the people have started preferring bikes instead of scooters and mopeds and today bikes form a major part of the Indian two wheelers. Indian companies are one of the largest two wheeler manufacturers in the world. The number one bike manufacturer in the world, Hero Honda is in close competition with the Indian manufacturer Bajaj India. The motorcycle industry in India has witnessed a tremendous change in the 90s with the invention of 4 stroke engine which makes the bikes more fuel efficient. Further companies are trying to bring in more innovations to make the motorcycle ride more comfortable, safe and user
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friendly and economical.

In a nut shell the followings factors can be distinguished for the growth of motorcycle industry in India Easy accessibility to cheap consumer loans The increase in the average income of the family. The reduction in duties and taxes. Convenience with regards to commuting as compared to the public transport system. Continuous innovations in technology making the bikes economic and fuel-efficient.

2 SCOPE OF STUDY

This research covers the factors that influence buying behavior of consumers on bikes. It includes factors that make him/her to buy a particular bike.The factors describe pre-purchase and post-purchase behavior

3 OBJECTVE OF STUDY To study the major factors which make a consumer to buy a bike out several factors

4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues; designs the method for collection information manages and implements the data collection process; analysis the results and communication the findings and their implication.

4.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

Research design is the plan, structure and strategy of investigation conceived so as to obtain answer to research question and to control variance

The research design can be classified in to three broad categories

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(A) Exploratory (B) Descriptive (C) Casual

4.2 DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH

It includes surveys and fact-finding enquiries of different kinds. The major purpose of

descriptive research is description of the state of affairs as it exists at present. In social science and business research we quite often use the term Ex post facto research for descriptive research studies. The main characteristic of this method is that the researcher has no control over the variables; he can only report what has happened or what is happening. Most ex post facto research projects are used for descriptive studies in which the researcher seeks to measure such items as, for example, frequency of shopping, preferences of people, or similar data. Ex post facto studies also include attempts by researchers to discover causes even when they cannot control the variables. The methods of research utilized in descriptive research are survey methods of all kinds, including comparative and correlation methods

4.3 FACTOR ANALYSIS Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved, uncorrelated variables called factors. In other words, it is possible, for example, that variations in three or four observed variables mainly reflect the variations in fewer such unobserved variables. Factor analysis searches for such joint variations in response to unobserved latent variables. The observed variables are modeled as linear combinations of the potential factors, plus "error" terms. The information gained about the interdependencies between observed variables can be used later to reduce the set of variables in a dataset. Computationally this technique is equivalent to low rank approximation of the matrix of observed variables. Factor analysis originated in psychometrics, and is used in behavioral sciences, social sciences, marketing, product management, operations research, and other applied sciences that deal with large quantities of data.

Factor analysis is related to principal component analysis (PCA), but the two are not identical. Latent variable models, including factor analysis, use regression modelling techniques to test hypotheses producing error terms, while PCA is a descriptive statistical technique

Terminology Factor loadings: The factor loadings, also called component loadings in PCA, are the correlation coefficients between the variables (rows) and factors (columns). Analogous to Pearson's r, the squared factor loading is the percent of variance in that indicator variable explained by the factor. To get the percent of variance in all the variables accounted for by each factor, add the sum of the squared factor loadings for that factor (column) and divide by the number of variables. (Note the number of variables equals the sum of their variances as the variance of a standardized variable is 1.) This is the same as dividing the factor's eigenvalue by the number of variables. Interpreting factor loadings: By one rule of thumb in confirmatory factor analysis, loadings should be .7 or higher to confirm that independent variables identified a priori are represented by a particular factor, on the rationale that the .7 level corresponds to about half of the variance in the indicator being explained by the factor. However, the .7 standard is a high one and real-life data may well not meet this criterion, which is why some researchers, particularly for exploratory purposes, will use a lower level such as .4 for the central factor and .25 for other factors call loadings above .6 "high" and those below .4 "low". In any event, factor loadings must be interpreted in the light of theory, not by arbitrary cutoff levels. In oblique rotation, one gets both a pattern matrix and a structure matrix. The structure matrix is simply the factor loading matrix as in orthogonal rotation, representing the variance in a measured variable explained by a factor on both a unique and common contributions basis. The pattern matrix, in contrast, contains coefficients which just represent unique contributions. The more factors, the lower the pattern coefficients as a rule since there will be more common contributions to variance explained. For oblique rotation, the researcher looks at both the structure and pattern coefficients when attributing a label to a factor.
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Communality: The sum of the squared factor loadings for all factors for a given variable (row) is the variance in that variable accounted for by all the factors, and this is called the communality. The communality measures the percent of variance in a given variable explained by all the factors jointly and may be interpreted as the reliability of the indicator. Spurious solutions: If the communality exceeds 1.0, there is a spurious solution, which may reflect too small a sample or the researcher has too many or too few factors. Uniqueness of a variable: That is, uniqueness is the variability of a variable minus its communality. Eigenvalues:/Characteristic roots: The eigenvalue for a given factor measures the variance in all the variables which is accounted for by that factor. The ratio of eigenvalues is the ratio of explanatory importance of the factors with respect to the variables. If a factor has a low eigenvalue, then it is contributing little to the explanation of variances in the variables and may be ignored as redundant with more important factors. Eigenvalues measure the amount of variation in the total sample accounted for by each factor. Extraction sums of squared loadings: Initial eigenvalues and eigenvalues after extraction (listed by SPSS as "Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings") are the same for PCA extraction, but for other extraction methods, eigenvalues after extraction will be lower than their initial counterparts. SPSS also prints "Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings" and even for PCA, these eigenvalues will differ from initial and extraction eigenvalues, though their total will be the same. Factor scores (also called component scores in PCA): are the scores of each case (row) on each factor (column). To compute the factor score for a given case for a given factor, one takes the case's standardized score on each variable, multiplies by the corresponding factor loading of the variable for the given factor, and sums these products. Computing factor scores allows one to look for factor outliers. Also, factor scores may be used as variables in subsequent modeling.

Criteria for determining the number of factors Using one or more of the methods below, the researcher determines an appropriate range of solutions to investigate. Methods may not agree. For instance, the Kaiser criterion may suggest five factors and the scree test may suggest two, so the researcher may request 3-, 4-, and 5-factor solutions discuss each in terms of their relation to external data and theory. Comprehensibility: A purely subjective criterion would be to retain those factors whose meaning is comprehensible to the researcher. This is not recommended Kaiser criterion: The Kaiser rule is to drop all components with eigenvalues under 1.0 this being the eigenvalue equal to the information accounted for by an average single item. The Kaiser criterion is the default in SPSS and most statistical software but is not recommended when used as the sole cut-off criterion for estimating the number of factors as it tends to overextract factors. Variance explained criteria: Some researchers simply use the rule of keeping enough factors to account for 90% (sometimes 80%) of the variation. Where the researcher's goal emphasizes parsimony (explaining variance with as few factors as possible), the criterion could be as low as 50% Scree plot: The Cattell scree test plots the components as the X axis and the corresponding eigenvalues as the Y-axis. As one moves to the right, toward later components, the eigenvalues drop. When the drop ceases and the curve makes an elbow toward less steep decline, Cattell's scree test says to drop all further components after the one starting the elbow. This rule is sometimes criticised for being amenable to researcher-controlled "fudging". That is, as picking the "elbow" can be subjective because the curve has multiple elbows or is a smooth curve, the researcher may be tempted to set the cut-off at the number of factors desired by his or her research agenda. Horn's Parallel Analysis (PA): A Monte-Carlo based simulation method that compares the observed eigenvalues with those obtained from uncorrelated normal variables. A factor or component is retained if the associated eigenvalue is bigger than the 95th of the distribution of
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eigenvalues derived from the random data. PA is one of the most recommendable rules for determining the number of components to retain, but only few programs include this option. Before dropping a factor below one's cut-off, however, the researcher should check its correlation with the dependent variable. A very small factor can have a large correlation with the dependent variable, in which case it should not be dropped. Rotation methods The unrotated output maximises the variance accounted for by the first and subsequent factors, and forcing the factors to be orthogonal. This data-compression comes at the cost of having most items load on the early factors, and usually, of having many items load substantially on more than one factor. Rotation serves to make the output more understandable, by seeking so-called "Simple Structure": A pattern of loadings where items load most strongly on one factor, and much more weakly on the other factors. Rotations can be orthogonal or oblique (allowing the factors to correlate). Varimax rotation is an orthogonal rotation of the factor axes to maximize the variance of the squared loadings of a factor (column) on all the variables (rows) in a factor matrix, which has the effect of differentiating the original variables by extracted factor. Each factor will tend to have either large or small loadings of any particular variable. A varimax solution yields results which make it as easy as possible to identify each variable with a single factor. This is the most common rotation option. Advantages

Both objective and subjective attributes can be used provided the subjective attributes can be converted into scores

Factor Analysis can be used to identify hidden dimensions or constructs which may not be apparent from direct analysis

It is easy and inexpensive to do

Disadvantages

Usefulness depends on the researchers' ability to collect a sufficient set of product attributes. If important attributes are missed the value of the procedure is reduced.

If sets of observed variables are highly similar to each other and distinct from other items, factor analysis will assign a single factor to them. This may make it harder to identify factors that capture more interesting relationships.

Naming the factors may require background knowledge cor theory because multiple attributes can be highly correlated for no apparent reason.

5.DATA ANALYSIS v1= Brand reputation v2= Maintenance v3= Style v4= Mileage v5= Availability v6= Performance v7= availability of spares v8=Durability v9= Handling v10= after sales service v11= Price

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FACTOR ANALYSIS

KMO and Bartlett's Test Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square df Sig. .782 265.088 55 0.02

Table 1 The KMO measures the sampling adequacy which should be greater than 0.5 for a satisfactory factor analysis to proceed. Looking at the table 1 , the KMO measure is 0.782. From the same table, we can see that the Bartlett's test of sphericity is significant. That is, its associated probability is less than 0.05. In fact, it is actually 0.02. This means that the correlation matrix is not an identity matrix.

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Total Variance Explained Extraction Sums of Initial Eigenvalues Squared Loadings % of Compone nt 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Total 4.420 1.648 1.033 .923 .675 .578 .430 .388 .353 .334 .218 % of Variance 40.184 14.982 9.391 8.392 6.140 5.252 3.905 3.523 3.213 3.034 Cumulat ive % Total Varian Cumul ce ative % Total % of Variance 26.372 25.749 12.436 Cumulative % 26.372 52.121 64.557 Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings

40.184 4.420 40.184 40.184 2.901 55.166 1.648 14.982 55.166 2.832 64.557 1.033 72.949 79.089 84.341 88.246 91.768 94.981 98.015 9.391 64.557 1.368

1.985 100.000

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Table 2

Total variance explained shows all the factors extractable from the analysis along with their eigenvalues, the percent of variance attributable to each factor, and the cumulative variance of the factor and the previous factors. Notice that the first factor accounts for 26.372% of the variance, the second 25.749% and the third 12.436%. All the remaining factors are not significant.

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Rotated Component Matrixa Component 1 v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 v7 v8 v9 v10 v11 .669 .754 .718 .463 .320 .718 -.330 .223 .524 .003 .320 2 .307 -.085 .328 .695 .558 .186 .578 .785 .414 .819 .030 3 .236 .058 -.155 .040 .094 .327 .537 .207 .291 -.040 .866

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. a. Rotation converged in 6 iterations. Table 3

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Scree Plot The scree plot is a graph of the eigenvalues against all the factors. The graph is useful for determining how many factors to retain. The point of interest is where the curve starts to flatten. It can be seen that the curve begins to flatten between factors 3 and 4. Note also that factor 4 has an eigenvalue of less than 1, so only three factors have been retained.

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Variables after grouping

Value/reputation
Brand reputation Style Performance Handling

Satisfaction
Maintenance Mileage Availability Availability of spares Durability After sales service

Price
Price

6.INTERPRETAIONS AND FINDINGS

From the data collected it is found that Consumers are mostly influenced by television advertisement Major factors influencing the buying decision falls under value/reputation, satisfaction and price Factors which fall under value/reputation are brand reputation,style,performance and handling Factors which fall under satisfaction are maintenance,mileage,availability,availability of spares, durability and after sales service

7.LIMITATIONS
This schedule used for the purpose of collecting information from the respondent have the following limitations. In the process of data collection some of the respondents have expressed unwillingness in answering the schedule. The information collected from different customers may not be always exact.

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8.Questionnaire: Factors influencing consumer buying behavior on bikes

Name: Age: Occupation:

1)How important is price factor? 1)Very important 2)Important 3)Somewhat important 4)Not very important 5)Not at all important

2)Maintenance is the most important factor to be considered. 1)Strongly agree 2)Agree 3)Neither agree nor disagree 5)Strongly disagree 4)Disagree

3) How important is style factor? 1)Very important 2)Important 3)Somewhat important 4)Not very important 5)Not at all important

4)What is the level of importance given to durability factor. 1)Very important 2)Important 3)Somewhat important 4)Not very important 5)Not at all important

5)Mileage is the most important consideration 1)Strongly agree 2)Agree 3)Neither agree nor disagree 4)Disagree 5)Strongly disagree

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6)Handling of bike should be looked before buying a bike. 1)Strongly agree 2)Agree 3)Neither agree nor disagree 4)Disagree 5)Strongly disagree

7)Before buying a bike, consumer looks at its brand reputation 1)Strongly agree 2)Agree 3)Neither agree nor disagree 4)Disagree 5)Strongly disagree

8)How important is availability factor to you? 1)Very important 2)Important 3)Somewhat important 4)Not very important 5)Not at all important

9)Availability of spare parts should be considered as an factor before buying a bike 1)Strongly agree 2)Agree 3)Neither agree nor disagree 4)Disagree 5)Strongly disagree

10)Performance of a bike is the most important factor 1)Strongly agree 2)Agree 3)Neither agree nor disagree 4)Disagree 5)Strongly disagree

11)Consumers look at after sales services as an key factor 1)Strongly agree 2)Agree 3)Neither agree nor disagree 4)Disagree 5)Strongly disagree

12) Which media can influence you most? 1)Word of mouth2)TV advertisement3)newspapers4)others
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REFERENCES
Factor Analysis, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_analysis Factor Analysis, http://www.ncl.ac.uk/iss/statistics/docs/factoranalysis.php

Consumer behavior on bikes,http://www.jyd.in/Summer%20Internship%20Projects/Marketing/Stu dy%20on%20Consumer%20Buying%20Behaviour%20&%20Satisfaction% 20Level%20%20for%20Hero%20Honda%20Motorcycle%20By%20Owesh %20Dabawala.pdf MARKETING RESEARCH by Naresh k.Malhotra,Satyabushan Dash,sixth edition
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY by C.R.Kothari 2nd edition E-book

Two wheelers in India, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/two-wheelersinIndia

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