Ready-to-eat Market segmentation with special reference to Pune, India

India has a large base of young consumers who hardly find time for traditional cooking due to their busy life-styles which further creates significant potential for Ready-to-Eat food products. The fragmented market emphasizes the need to incisively understand the market for all the companies fighting within the space. This study is carried out with the sample size of 500 management graduates within the age group of 20–22. The paper seeks to segment the Ready-to-Eat market on the basis of lifestyle and psychographic orientations of customers using factor analysis-Principal component analysis and also to develop instrument to measure the orientation of customers. Five factors were extracted as compared to the earlier studies done where only four factors were extracted. These factors are positive and negative health orientation which is also the distinguishing factor and significant outcome of this study along with taste, convenience and tradition. This finding can be utilized to develop marketing strategies for companies facing tough competition.