THE IMPACT OF MARKETING MIX ELEMENTS ON THE CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR, IN THE CASE OF RETAIL SUPERMARKETS IN ADDIS ABABA.

Abstract

The study of consumer behavior is very essential in the field of marketing as it helps firms to construct a smarter marketing strategy by getting an insight about what affect the decision making of consumers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of marketing mix elements on consumer buying behavior of supermarket consumers in Addis Ababa. Empirical evidence from 150 participants shopping at five supermarkets validates a theoretical model, indicating a significant positive relationship between marketing mix variables and consumer purchasing behavior. Factors or the marketing mix elements examined are product, price, shopping convenience, promotion, store atmosphere and personnel. Out of the 200 distributed questionnaires, 173 were collected 27 were not returned. During data editing, the collected questionnaires were checked for errors and 22 incomplete questionnaires were identified and discarded. Therefore 150 questionnaires were found to be valid and used for the final analysis All responses were collected by using questionnaire through convenience sampling (n=150). Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, comparing mean analysis (i.e. one-way ANOVA) and other analysis (correlation and multiple linear regression) Results reveal that personnel, promotion and price factors exerts greatest influence on consumer buying decision, followed by shopping convenience, store atmosphere, and product respectively. The finding of the study also shows that there is a significant difference between supermarkets product consumers who belongs to different age group, educational background and Income level with regard to product, shopping convenience, promotion, price and store atmosphere and personnel. These findings contribute to the literature relating to retail marketing and have marketing implications for bringing traffic into supermarkets and increasing sales. Supermarkets should set up a comfortable buying atmosphere, drafting more influencing and informative promotion, give up to date training to their employees, should consider level of competition, access to transportation, availability of parking, easy accessibility and long opening hours while making store location decision, should maintain the right pricing decision and carrying deep assortment of products lead them to become super specialist.