A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CONSUMER PREFERENCES BETWEEN SUPERMARKETS AND LOCAL STORES: AFFORDABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY, AND AVAILABILITY OF PRODUCTS IN HYDERABAD

Management

In Hyderabad, India, this study looks at consumer preferences between supermarkets and neighborhood (kirana) shops, focusing on product availability, pricing, and accessibility. Researchers collected data from 209 respondents using a structured questionnaire. They analyzed the data with IBM SPSS's CHAID (Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detection), descriptive statistics, and chi-square tests. The results indicate that most respondents believe supermarkets are better in all areas, with 80% favoring affordability, 62% for accessibility, and 63% for availability. The most important factor affecting shopping choices was product availability (χ² = 61.055, p = 0.000). CHAID analysis also revealed distinct behavioral patterns: 41.2% of respondents who found supermarkets more consistent preferred them, 53.1% who thought local stores had better availability chose a mixed-shopping strategy, and 69.2% who believed local stores had better availability preferred them. These findings highlight the resilience and local strengths of kirana businesses while also indicating a notable shift toward modern retail formats. The report provides valuable recommendations for public policy and retail strategy to balance the sustainability of traditional local shops with the growth of contemporary retail

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.