A Study on Mothers’ Buying Behavior for Their Kids: A Mumbai Perspective

Mumbai is a big and expensive city with people from varied income groups. Here we see both dual income as well as single income family, and it is also very common here that many of these types of families have enough disposable income. The purpose of this paper is to find out if there is any difference in buying pattern between working and non-working moms, and what are the factors that lead to their buying behavior for their kids. A structured questionnaire was designed and used to collect data from two groups—working moms and non-working moms, covering respondents from entire Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Findings of the study is contrary to the general understanding that working mothers spend more for their kids. It is rather found that family income that mainly matters the most while purchase/spending/expenditure decision for their kids. With high level of competition and availability of so many ‘me too’ products in many categories, which mothers buy for their children, marketers need to understand how to target these mothers and also they need to grasp the reasonableness of the components that lead to decision making for these products.

The study explicitly examined the Mumbai mothers’ buying behavior for their children mainly focusing to the spending pattern and the type of products they prefer to buy. The finding would suggest about the motivational factors that lead to their purchase behavior and the impact of being working or non-working.