A Study on the Role of Demographic and Psychographic Dynamics in Food and Grocery Retailing

The Indian food and grocery retail sector is in the transformation mode for various reasons like strong macro-economic fundamentals and the changing socio-economic scene are driving what were once traditional and small scale retail outlets into organised retail formats aimed at catering to the evolving tastes and needs of the discerning consumers. But the very fast changing trends in food and eating habits of consumers have contributed immensely to the growth of ‘Western’ format typologies such as convenience stores, departmental stores, supermarkets, specialty stores and hypermarkets. This has happened for various conspicuous reasons namely demand and supply, socio-cultural, demographic, psychographic, economic and technology advancements like a large segment of young population, a rapidly expanding middle class, rising income levels, growing literacy, increasing number of working women and nuclear family structures which in turn have created an enormous demand for consumer goods and paved way for modern retail formats. The ever changing consumer's psychographic variables like activities, interests, opinions, values and lifestyles have also completely changed the formats namely convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets etc. are the crystal clear reflections of tectonic shifts in demographic and psychographic changes of consumers. However, little is known about its actual influence and contribution to the organised retailing in food and grocery sector from an empirical analysis. Thus, understanding of demo-psychographic dynamics has become an imperative in designing modern food and grocery retail formats based on the purchase patterns. The study is purely based on primary data and necessary secondary data to reinforce the model. A total of 200 retail customers in Hyderabad actively participated in the survey. Findings, various managerial and marketing implications are extensively discussed.