Segmentation of Consumer Durable Market in Kerala based on Festival Buying Motives

Festival season constitute the main buying period across India, especially for consumer durable goods, which contributes almost 45-50% of the total annual sales. In a highly segmented market with different races, subcultures, religions, castes, linguistic groups and geographical variations, significant differences exist with regard to the buying motives, buying behavior and consumption patterns of the consumers. It is imperative to identify various factors and the extent of influences on consumer behavior during festivals, enabling marketers to be more precise on their occasion based marketing efforts. Considering market segmentation and knowledge about segment characteristics, as powerful marketing tools, this study is an attempt to understand the underlying dimensions of festival buying motives and to segment the consumer durable market. Thirty-one motivational items were factor analyzed in order to delineate underlying dimensions of motivation associated with festival buying and done the segmentation using cluster analysis based on the delineated motivation factors. Cluster analysis identified four clustered segments from the six motivation dimensions in which the Renewal and Family togetherness seekers were found to be the most important segment. Group of Deal seekers was the second important cluster, followed by multi-purpose festival buyers and the last cluster was Ritual and auspicious time seekers.