Factors Influencing Purchase of Fake FMCG Products among Urban and Rural Consumers – An Empirical Analysis

Objectives: Indian economy is agrarian based and the rural population shared half of the gross domestic product of India. Though, with changes in economy, advanced technology and innovative marketing, the rural population is exploited by way of poor quality products and services, common shortages leads to black marketing, irrational pricing, promotions and others. To accord with it, this study intends to identify the various factors inducing the purchase of FMCG products in both rural and urban areas and the level of impact on these factors towards the purchase of fake FMCG products. Methods/ Analysis: This study is conducted in rural and urban areas of Madurai District in Tamil Nadu which is considered primarily as the universe of the present study. The present study comprising of 20 villages in Madurai District consisting of 100 rural sample respondents and also covered 100 sample respondents from Madurai city (urban). Thus, the researcher has used multistage simple random sampling technique within the sampling frame to collect the urban and rural responses for the study. This study depends mainly on primary data. A structured interview schedule (in regional language) was constructed and administered to collect primary data among the rural and urban groups for a period of one month from November 2015 to December 2015. Findings: The study findings pointed out that urban consumers were influenced by ‘conviction’ and ‘appeal’ factors and the rural consumers were influenced by ‘conviction’ and ‘promotions’ during their purchase behavior towards fake FMCG products. Thus, an integrated approach including representative from corporate firms, retailer forum, sales executives is needed to empower the rural and urban consumers by way of including consumer education, training for government enforcement officials, research and statistical analysis, public policy analysis and support for policy development and sharing global best practices information. Applications/Improvement: This study has given a new acumen in the field of creating consumer awareness towards purchasing of fake products among rural population.