An Analysis On The Success Of Maruti Suzuki Pvt Ltd From The Perspective Of Relationship Between Culture And Consumer Behavior

For a company to succeed in the global competitive environment, it is imperative to assess the consumer behavior of the country they want to target. Consumer behavior is influenced by many factors, but one major factor would be cultural. It forms the biggest contributor to molding a consumer's behavior in any country for any product purchase decision. This thesis analyzes the culture of India and how it influences consumer behavior within the car industry. The research topic has been narrowed down to the monopoly in the Indian car industry since this topic has not been written or researched about until now. Many authors have touched the topic of Maruti Suzuki's monopoly in the Indian car industry, but very few have explored the reasons behind this fact, and none have connected this factual argument to India's cultural influence on the car buying behavior.In this paper, the writer puts general information on culture and consumer behavior, thereafter narrowing down the research to Indian culture and Indian consumer behavior, and eventually narrowing it down to the Indian middle class which is the target market of our case study company. In order to connect the middle class with cultural influence and car buying decision, it was also important for the writer to give a brief on the pre and post liberalization policy in India (1991). These policies have directly influenced consumer's preferences and buying behavior, depending on their income level. Connections between culture and consumer behavior are explored by the writer such as a brief description on the Indian culture which comprises of marriage, religion, festivals, family, language, economy and reformation. All these factors come together and define the culture of India, which is difficult to comprehend since it is one of the most diverse nations in the World. The factors explored (mentioned above), influence an Indian consumer's buying behavior towards even a car purchase. Consumers in many countries buy a car due to different factors like: income, social status, need, or luxury. In India, all these factors, including religion (which have given birth to a habit in consumers to buy certain things on certain religious days as they are celebrated with zeal in India) festivals, family status also contribute towards purchasing decision since there is a trend to 'gift' cars in weddings, purchasing of an 'asset' during religious festivities and festivals is a commonplace. The writer proves this theory in this paper that sales of car go up during the wedding, religious, and festival season. The case study chosen is Maruti Suzuki Pvt Ltd, which has monopoly in the Indian car industry owing to low prices which matches the ever growing middle class of India. Thus, concentrating on middle class and its proper evaluation has also been done.The research methodology includes two different surveys conducted among the general population proving that people purchase Maruti Suzuki brand due to factors already explained in the paper. However, there are several limitations as well to this study. Getting a cross country survey is a trying task and is not possible to conduct on a large scale. Hence, the number of people surveyed is limited. Another limitation discussed is the 'narrowed down' search as this topic 'relationship between culture and consumer behavior'can cover a broader perspective, for the purpose of writing this paper, it has been limited to only the monopoly in the Indian car Industry. The writes concludes the study with an effort to further analysis and research on several other industries which are also affected by'cultural factors'in India.