Psychographic segmentation of youth in the evolving Indian retail market

Abstract

Indian youth is emerging as a very powerful and significant consumer market. Marketers would be able to devise more effective strategies to tap this segment if they were able to get insights into their psychographic profiles. The present study, therefore, seeks to understand the psychographic along with demographic variables of the youth in India. Based on cluster analysis, four psychographic clusters are identified: ‘Get-going Adopter’, ‘Inner Value-oriented Conservative’, ‘Political and Sport Enthusiast’ and ‘Independent Life Lover’. The findings reveal significant psychographic differences among the identified clusters and suggest that it is more meaningful for the marketer to concentrate on two segments, ‘Get-going Adopter’ and ‘Independent Life Lover’ that account for 70% of the respondents rather than the other two clusters and design their marketing strategies accordingly.

Keywords:

• psychographic segmentation
• Indian youth

Notes

1. 1 US dollar = 45 Indian rupees approximately (May 2010).

2. Hindi is the principle language spoken in Lucknow.

3. The Government of India has officially documented castes and sub-castes in order to provide reservation or positive discrimination in education and jobs to socially and economically backward people of the country. The framers of the Indian Constitution opined that due to prevalence of the caste system in the country Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) were historically oppressed and denied equal opportunity in nation-building activities. They provided for 15% and 7.5% of vacancies as reserved quota for the SC and ST candidates respectively for a period of five years in 1950. This reservation was applicable for admission to government aided educational institutes and jobs in the government/public sector,. However, the succeeding governments have continued to extend this policy of reservation till today and have also included other backward classes by providing reservation to them to the level of 27%. Scheduled Castes comprises ‘untouchables’ or ‘Dalit’, Scheduled Tribes consists of tribal groups and Other Backward Classes covers more than 3,000 castes. The Supreme Court (apex court of the country) has put a cap on this reservation at 50%. General category comprises forward castes that do not qualify for reservation. This has caused resentment among the forward class who complain of reverse discrimination.