Factors Influencing Customer Loyalty and Choise of Retailers while buying Fast Moving Consumer Goods

Abstract: Before several decades a retail store was only a small shop in the locality from where the consumers living nearby would buy groceries and other products that they use on a daily basis and was happy and content with it. This is not the case anymore. From small departmental stores to hypermarkets, there has been massive growth in the retail industry. Now, every retail store tries to attract customers by trying to satisfy the customer’s needs both by making the right product available for its customers and by making it easy for the customer to make the buying decision. One main reason for the same is that the retail industry has a lot of competitors and in order to be successful, any retail store should make sure that they have an edge over the others. The main aim of this study is to find the factors influencing a customer to choose a retail store when buying Fast Moving Consumer Goods. By understanding the same retailers can try and improvise on these factors and thereby increase their chances of making the customers come back again and again to their store to buy these goods. Fast Moving Consumer Goods are food and non-food everyday consumer products that are sold quickly and at relatively low cost. The Fast Moving Consumer Goods can be classified as Highly Perishable and Others. The specific objectives of this research are to find the factors influencing a customer in choosing a retail store for Highly Perishable Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Other Fast Moving Consumer Goods. Three categories under each of these classifications are chosen and customer’s choice of retail store for each of these categories will be assessed. Based on the results after analysing the responses of several people obtained using a questionnaire, the top factors are determined. No matter what the background of the customer, Price, Product Quality and Availability of all brand and products are the three main factors that determine the same. Analysis of all the hypotheses shows that there is either no difference or minimal difference only in the choice of factors by customers of different demographics such as age, gender, income level, marital status etc.