Retailing behavior of rural and urban consumers towards unorganized retail outlets - an empirical study

Retailing is one of the fastest growing industries across the world. It is also one of the very important industries in terms of customer value addition and economic stability in a country. Today, retailing has gained more importance because of the new business models adopted in the sector. The development in retailing is the reflection of change in the life style of customers. Country like India, where urban and rural consumer disparities are high, retailers need to consider the varied input of consumers for designing retail mix strategies. In the present study an attempt is made to analyze the behavioral quotient of the urban and rural customers in their retailing practices. In this exploratory study an effort is made to understand the behavioral differences among different demographic variables. The outcome of the study reveals that opinion of the urban and rural customers on traditional and modern retail outlets are more or less similar. But, opinion of the different demographic variables on traditional and modern retail outlets is found to be different.