Author(s): Dr. Richa Tyagi and Dr. Renu Arora

Abstract:
Marketer and non-marketer dominated sources of information are revolution for consumer buying practices. These sources help the buyers to rationalize their purchase of products in terms of non-durable goods. Review of literature in this area had mainly focused on role of advertisement, their impact on children buying practices, impact of sales promotion, impact of sources during purchase of durable goods etc. However, not much emphasize had been laid on the extent of influence of both marketer and non-marketer dominated sources of information with complete focus on non-durable goods. Also, Middle income group had found to be the real demand base for manufactured products. Therefore, this income group had been selected as the target group for the present study. Keeping these aspects in view, the present study was planned with the specific objectives “To study Consumer Buying Behaviour for Non-Durables: “Influence of Sources of Information” For the purpose of data collection, survey technique using an interview schedule was used. Total sample of 600 middle income group families of South Delhi was considered to be adequate for conducting the study. Results had indicated that maximum number of respondents had used “Advertisement” – (a Marketer Dominated Source of Information) for the purchase of selected toiletries. Whereas, Reference Group including family, friends, relatives – (non-marketer dominated source of information), was used after advertisement, for the selected toiletries. Further, scrutiny of the data had indicated that Television advertising was found to be the most popular media used by the respondents for the purchase of non-durables followed by newspaper, magazine and internet advertising. Though studies had shown that advertising and sales promotion go hand in hand, but still Sales promotion was found to be on third rank. Price-pack was the most preferred promotional scheme by the respondents followed by free samples. “New & Reviews, Programme & Happening” and “Publicity and Public Relation” were ranked, fourth and fifth respectively. Investigator further, analysed the data, to study the specific kind of publicity and public relation used by the respondents as a source of information. Majority of the respondents used news as a source of information followed by publications and identity media. Hence, in the present study, it was inferred that for the purchase of selected non-durables, advertising influenced the consumers the most, followed by the reference group, whereas publicity and public relation influenced the least while purchasing non-durables.