brand name while making their decision. p> 5. Usually people plan to purchase pastas in advance (87%). In spite of this, the decision about the particular sort and brand name (if there is any) is usually impulse (63%). p> 6. The crisis dramatically affected the market of pastas. We talked to the salesmen of pastas to shed light on this question. All of the salesmen we talked to said that before the crisis people preferred imported pastas to domestic ones. Now domestic pastas of low quality (37%) and middle quality (45%) are bought (According to our survey, not to salesmen). We expected changes to happen, but we did not expect them to be so huge, though LBS Corporation's manufacture of pastas very notably increased since before August, 17 th . p> 7. The most desirable size of package is 1kg (57%), then goes a 500g package (38%).
8. People almost do not purchase domestic automatically packed pastas. Their price is almost equal to the price of imported pastas.
9. 72% of respondents said that they would prefer automatically packed pasta to manually packed one. 35% would do it because they are afraid of being given light weight, 19% do not like unawareness about the manufacturer, and 11% think the quality is poor.
In spite of this, people are not willing to pay much for packaging, though 82% of them agree that they would prefer automatically packed pasta to manually packed one. Only 9% were willing to pay more than 1 ruble for a 500g package, 24% would pay from 0.6 to 1 ruble for a 500g package, 28% would pay about 0.5 ruble, and 10% would pay nothing at all (some even said they would prefer manually packed pastas because they can use the packaging).
10. People would not like to buy pastas in cardboard or other non-glassy packaging. Actually all of the respondents said they need to look at the product to estimate its quality.
11. Though people agree that imported pastas tend to be better than the domestic ones, most of them (67%) would not like to pay more than 25% more for imported pastas.
12. People do not worry a lot about the brand name. There are no hard-core loyals. There are a few split loyals (11%). They are among the people who still prefer imported pastas. The most popular brands are: Nordic (27% of imported pastas purchased were of this brand), Big (21%). Non of the respondents was a loyal of any domestic trademarks.
13. Actually all people said that it is bad that Russia substitutes natural resources for industrial goods, but only 4% said they often think about it when they make their purchase decision, 7% said they sometimes do, 5% seldom think of this.
14. Since it was difficult for the respondents to answer weather they used to consume more or less pastas before the crisis (more than 50% could not answer at all or hesitated), we used the salesmen as our reserve source of information. According to them, the overall consumption of pastas decreased by approximately 15%, and consumption of imported pastas has just slummed-by more than 50%. h1> Conclusions.
Putting two and two together, we can state the following. h2> General findings.
1. The price is the most important factor influencing the consumer's purchase decision. It will probably keep its position or even be able to strengthen it if we take the constantly deteriorating economic situation in the country into account.
2. The lower middles and the lower class are the most attractive segments from the point of value. The lowers will more likely need low and middle quality pastas. Taking into account the role of price in purchase decision, we should assume that this segment will hardly react the traditional marketing measures. The other segments high class will probably require more elaborated marketing mixes, since quality plays the most important role there. Quality is estimated subjectively, and we can affect subjective probability using the means of marketing.
The lower middles and higher middles will probably prefer middle quality pastas. the biggest difference between them is in the price they are ready to pay for quality. A company can acquire competitive advantages using automated process of packaging. The main difficulty it is likely to face here - the increase in price must be low enough. It also should be careful and remember about positioning: even if it is able to automatically pack at a low cost and provide the necessary low price, its products than will be positioned as middle quality ones due to the low price. It may harm its reputation and its marketing in the higher middles and high class segments.
The high class segment is relatively small and less attractive because its representatives are less likely to buy pastas in general and when they buy, they are more likely to buy imported pastas.
Actually we can join the higher and the lower middles in one market segmen...
