Assessing the Market Potential of Home-Made Masala and Spice Powder

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This paper aims at assessing the consumer choice for masala (Homemade/ Ready-made powder) for home cooking in Trivandrum City in the state of Kerala, India. Kerala is popularly known as the "King of Spices," the leading producer of black pepper, enjoying a pride of place among all the spice producers. From the analysis made by us it is clear that people choose home-made forms of masala rather than ready-made ones. The reasons behind this are clearly studied in this paper. The target market is identified and segmented. Geographic segmentation is done by dividing the entire Trivandrum city into 12 major locations. Socio-demographic segmentation was also done on the basis of age, gender and income. Descriptive research design is being employed for the study. The data is collected using survey method by self-administering questionnaire or survey instrument. This paper is mainly divided into two main parts. The first part talks about the relationship between certain demographic factors like age, income and gender with the choice of masalas. The sample size is 300 and a Chi-square test of independence is done using SPSS tool. The second part talks about the reasons why people prefer home-made forms compared to ready-made forms of spice and masala powders. For this the sample size was 121 respondents. The analysis is done using Voyant tool. Text mining approach has been adopted. From the results it is clear that there is no significant correlation between the demographic factors considered and the choice made. Most of the respondents prefer to use home-made spices and masala powders as they consider it to be not adulterated. The two major factors driving the growth of the global organic food & beverage market are the number of health-conscious customers and growing awareness of the health benefits associated with organic spice consumption. Health is an important aspect considered in the case of spice powders and masala. People do not tolerate adulteration and hence they tend to choose the traditional methods of making masala powders over the ready-made forms available in the market today. This study would help the marketers to know the market potential and also to understand the consumer needs in case of spices and masala powders.