A Study on Consumer Preferences towards Purchasing Personal Products in Retail Malls with Reference to Sultanate of Oman

Abstract

Retail business is increasing rapidly due to global, regional and local competition. It is noticed that lot of competition is existing between traditional and modern retailers to sustain in the market. The main objective of the study is to know the consumers preference towards shopping in malls on various product categories and their satisfaction levels. It is an exploratory study conducted to know the parameters considered by consumers to prefer shopping malls on various product categories. The research instrument has been designed by the method of 5-point likert scale to generate the data from the respondents. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used to analyze the spending behavior based on age, education and family size. Whereas, Chi square test has been used to analyze whether there is any difference of opinion on buying branded products in relation to gender and marital status and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the factors considered towards purchase of various categories of branded products such as apparels, personal care and footwear. The shopping preferences are different among the people based on the age, educational background and family size. Most significant contributors for the people to transform from traditional to modern shopping mall culture are availability of quality and wide verities supported with international brands.