A Comparative Study of Consumer Buying Behavior on Hair Care Products of HUL and P&G

Abstract

FMCG refers to Fast Moving Consumer Goods, requirement for daily or frequent use. Typically, a consumer buys these goods at least once a month. The sector covers a wide gamut of products such as detergents, toilet soaps, toothpastes, shampoos, creams, powders, food products, confectioneries, beverages, cigarettes.Hindustan Unilever Limited is India's largest Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Company based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It is owned by the British-Dutch company Unilever which controls 52% majority stake in HUL. Its products include foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. P&G is one of the largest and amongst the fastest growing consumer goods companies in India. Established in 1964, P&G India now serves over 650 million consumers across India. Its presence pans across the Beauty & Grooming segment, the Household Care segment as well as the Health & Well Being segment, with trusted brands that are household names across India. These include Vicks, Ariel, Tide, Whisper, Olay, Gillette, Ambipur, Pampers, Pantene, Oral-B, Head & Shoulders, Wella and Duracell.According to Haircare industry in India reported from Datamonitor, in 2009, India witnessed over 200 new product launches, Most new product launches occurred in theshampoo category, which accounted for nearly 45% of all new offerings, followed by conditioners and styling agents which collectively accounted for over 40% of launches in 2009. Hair colorants accountedfor over 10% of new launches and this figure is expected to increase in the future, due to a steadyincrease in India’s young population. The least number of new product launches took place in the permsand relaxers segment, which made up just about 2% of all new launches. This is primarily because suchproducts target a very niche segment of the population and are yet to find favour with the masses.Therefore, my study was focused on three objectives to compare Indian consumer buying behavior between HUL and P&G such as to study Indian consumer buying behavior on hair care products of HUL and P&G, to evaluate the factors influencing hair care consumer buying behavior of HUL and P&G in Indian market and to assess the marketing strategy on hair care products of HUL and P&G.A sample size of 190 respondents was used for this study. Primary data and secondary data were used in this study, and data from the questionnaire was analyzed by software SPSS version 19 to describe the qualitative and quantitative data. From the data analysis of Indian consumer buying behavior on hair care products of HUL and P&G were generally females who used hair care products of HUL and P&G, and 72.1% of the respondents were in the age group of 20-25 years. Moreover, there was a relationship between age, gender and income to spending for hair care products. On the other hand, the respondents’ behavior for using was under 1 year only for hair care products of HUL and P&G, therefore Indian consumers did not have product loyalty for both companies, and they might change or swift to other brands anytime due to many factors for example prices for hair care products that they were willing to spending was at Rs. 101-500. Hence, there was price sensitivity, age-related, gender-related and income related for Indian consumers buying behavior for hair care products of both companies. And there were many factors affecting them to buy hair care products of HUL and P&G, most of them normally used only shampoo, and some of them used shampoo with hair oil, so that both companies should be considered the ways to attract them to buy other hair care products such as conditioner, gel, spray, etc. however, according to HUL, there was only sales promotion like buy shampoo get one conditioner free, on the other hand, “Dove”, “Sunsilk” shampoo of HUL were very famous for Indian consumers and most of them were females. In contrary, “Head and shoulder”, “Pantene” shampoo were famous for both males and females. And those were the reasons why both companies wanted to produce brands for females and males. However, 62.26% of the respondents said that sources of Media factor in which Indian consumers preferred was from television, and this advertising campaign of both companies HUL and P&G was successful on broadcast Medias. Moreover, the other factors influenced Indian consumers to buy was from friends and family. And store location factor was influenced Indian consumers to buy hair care products especially from cosmetic store and retail store near home. And Indian consumers were sometimes reviewed the information related to hair care products before making decision to buy.