Determinants of the Buying Behavior of Young Consumers of Branded Clothes: An Empirical Analysis

There are strong preferences among young generation for branded products and normally they are the major target group of different marketing campaigns for different products. Brands promote customer loyalty and generate huge revenue than nombranded products. Accordingly, in the present study, an attempt has been made to examine the factor affecting branded clothes among young consumers. The results indicate that product design, reliability and trust, social influence and discounts, brand name and fashion, status symbol and uniqueness are the main factors influencing a young consumer to buy branded clothes. There is association between age, marital status, occupation, education, income and buying of branded clothes, whereas there is no association between gender and education for buying branded clothes.IntroductionIndia is witnessing a change in the lifestyles of a large section of the population. The need to understand the emerging markets and consumers has become a big challenge for the corporate world especially in creating and managing a powerful brand. By developing a powerful brand, the corporate can establish 'brand equity', and brand equity assists firms in a variety of ways to manage competition and to maintain market share (Pandian et al., 2012). Brands are drivers of competitive edge. Brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition (Keller, 2008). Branding is everything a marketer does to the offer so that the consumer discriminates a brand in its favor. Building up of this prejudice in the consumer's mind is the ultimate aim of branding. But one thing to be kept in mind while branding is that this process is directed at customer value creation. It is winning through value (Verma, 2010). A brand provides not only a source of information (thus revealing its values) but performs certain other functions which justify its attractiveness and its monetary return (higher price) when they are valued by buyers. Brands have financial value because they have created assets in the minds and hearts of customers, distributors, prescribers and opinion leaders. These assets are brand awareness, beliefs of exclusivity and superiority of some valued benefit and emotional bonding. This is what is expressed in the classic definition of a brand: 'a brand is a set of mental associations, held by the consumer, which add to the perceived value of a product or service. These associations should be unique (exclusivity), strong (saliency) and positive (desirable). This definition focuses on the gain in perceived value brought by the brand. The functions of the brand for the consumer are identification, practicality, guarantee, optimization, badge, continuity, hedonistic and ethical (Kapferer, 2008).Young consumers of today are inclined more towards leading a comfortable and hassle - free life. They have come into possession of money and wish to spend it on trusted goods and services, which are well worth the money that they would pay. 'Brands' cost them dearly and yet they prefer the same as they are conscious of the fact that branded products give them their money's worth. This generation of consumers may, therefore, be labeled as 'the brand-conscious generation (Pandian et al., 2012). When consumers form an attitude toward the product they make evaluative associations between the product and its attributes. Some of those attributes may be utilitarian such as durability or comfort, or hedonic such as color, fashion ability or styling (Cardoso, 2005). This paper focuses on the buying behavior of young consumers in India towards branded clothes.Literature ReviewEck (2004) examined the perception of young black customers towards branded versus unbranded apparels. Consumers' perception was calculated with the use of a 7-point Likert scale and it was found that adolescent males and females have positive and flourishing perception regarding branded clothes. …