An investigation of Woman Life Cycle (WLC) stages and their influence on food shopping behaviour

Women across the world are expanding beyond traditional roles to influence decisions in the home, in business and in politics. Given such an important emerging role of women, it is so significant for the retail firms to identify, analyse and aggregate their shopping behaviour across various categories especially in food. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the body of knowledge of retail research with a focus on WLC stage and its influence on women food shopping behaviour. Based on few demographic variables such as marital status, no. of children and status of children the respondents were grouped across 8 Woman Life Cycle stages such as Single Adult, Married woman with no children, Woman with young children I (in family way), Woman with young children II (with new born), Woman with young children III (with toddler), Woman with grownup children I (with school going child), Woman with grownup children II (with college going child) and Woman in later stage. Findings of the study indicates the preference of store format is different across the WLC stages and even within a particular food category the preference changes.