Impact of COVID-19 on Consumers’ Buying Behaviour and Consumption Pattern towards Milk in Nagpur City of Maharashtra

Understanding and monitoring the behaviour of consumers is vital for producers of products and services which help them for market development, new product design, packaging and promotional efforts, so as to suit for milk consumers. Also, to know about how the milk sales were affected during COVID-19, the project was undertaken. The descriptive cross sectional research design was used. The place of study was Nagpur City of Maharashtra and duration was 1st July to 31st July 2020. The data has been collected from 100 milk consumers. Non-Probability Convenience sampling method was used. Primary data was collected through Personal Interview Method by meeting consumers. Secondary data was collected from journals, Research papers, and Company website. Descriptive Statistics method such as Percentage, Averages, Rankings, etc. was used to analyze the data. Graphical analysis was used to achieve the objectives of the study.

It was found that Roadside vendors (54.29%) were the major source for purchase of packaged milk followed by Kirana stores (37.14%). Major important source for getting information about the milk brands was Television (47.14%), followed by Newspapers (37.14%), Retailers (14.29%) respectively. It was observed that among various attributes that affect purchase of milk, Taste was the most important attribute, followed by Quality, Brand Image, Packaging and Price respectively. The study with reference to homemade dairy products revealed that majority of the respondents (76%) were not making dairy products at home, only near about 1/4th respondents (24%) were making dairy products at home. During Lockdown majority of the respondents (63%) had no change in their milk consumption, while for near about 1/4th respondents (23%) consumption was increased and for some respondents (14%) consumption was decreased. For 23% respondents 250ml increase in milk consumption was seen. For majority of the respondents (65.22%) the reason for increase in milk consumption was All family members staying at home and for rest of the respondents (34.78%) it was Work from home. For 10% respondents 250ml decrease in milk consumption was seen and for 4% respondents 500ml decrease was seen. For majority of the respondents (78.57%) the reason for decrease in milk consumption was Financial issues.