Retail Store Choice : Perception, Preferences and Buying Behavior of Consumers

Fruits and vegetables form a major commodity group under food category retail. Consumers have a wide range of retailing stores for purchasing fruits and vegetables. Data were collected from the fruits and vegetable consumers from five different retail store outlets like National Corporate Retail Chain (NCRC), Regional Corporate Retail Chain (RCRC), Private Sector Specialised Store (PRSS), Public Sector Specialised Store (PUSS) and Mom and Pop Store (M&P) in the Coimbatore city. The broad objective of the study is to explore the store choice preferences and buying behavior of consumers in these stores. The product choice factors namely fresh produce, product cleanliness, wider merchandise, credibility of product, product upgrading and frequent refilling influenced the consumers' store choice preferences for ideal fruits and vegetables store. Awareness and Knowledge were the other two variables which had positive significant influence on the WTP higher prices for organic F&V. The modern F&V retail stores need to bestow attention to personalized service and convenience factor in their stores so as to improve their competitive advantage.