The Impact of Demographic Characteristics on Service Apartment Selection in Mumbai

An understanding of consumer behavior depends on recognizing the importance of the characteristics of the buyer, one of the methods to describe the characteristics of buyers is demographic segmentation. Demographic segmentation deals with many ways of statistically categorizing all the people in a national population. For example, a nation's population can be divided into subgroups by age, sex, income, education, occupation, social class, family size, race and religion

In this study, the researcher will classify three major demographic characteristics which are age level, educational level, and income level as illustrated below.

Major Demographic Characteristics Variables

Demographic Characteristics	Examples of Subgroups
Age Levels	Adolescents, young adults, middle-aged, elderly
Educational Levels	Elementary. Graduation, Post Graduation
Income levels	Destitute, poor, middle income, affluent

Table 3.2 Demographics Characterisation and the subgroups (Philip Kotler)

3.5.1 Age Levels

People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes. Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and even Service Apartment s are often related to age (Kotler, 2003). Some companies offer different products or marketing strategies to penetrate various ages and life-cycle segments.

The age subculture into three subcategories: baby, teen and the mature market that is likely to have different needs. ‘Baby Boomer’ generation of people born between 1946 and 1964 is large in several industrialized nations, Japan, the U.K., Canada, and others. This market represents tremendous buying potential for tourism, Therefore it can be expected that most business Travellers are likely fit in this age level and they may have similar attitudes towards important factors on serviced apartment selection. In service industry business, the age levels of Travellers may directly determine their patterns of travel. Different age groups have significant impacts on accommodation selection factors.

3.5.2 Educational Levels

Consumers’ attitudes and behaviors are varied by different educational backgrounds With regard to the service industry, that the Travellers with lower educational levels placed an importance on ‘media’ than those with higher educational levels. People with higher educational levels might have been in higher positions in careers and they might not have time to search service information on media channels, but from some other sources else. It can be stated that education levels may affect the way consumers making purchase decisions.

3.5.3 Income Levels

Income has long been used by marketers to create products and services. Kotler, stated that the Service Apartment industry is particularly effective in using income segmentation. Levels of income may be considered as a subculture, because people with different levels of income might have different values, behaviours, and lifestyles.

 In addition, it is found that education has a very strong relationship with levels of income as it was stated that nearly half of the populations having higher income have completed four years of college, but only 10 percent of populations with lower income have done so

 In travel industry, the study revealed that people with higher income and education levels tended to search for more products or services information. This assumes that individual income levels may influence consumer behaviour in purchase decision-making.

People from each group of different demographics such as age levels, educational levels, and income levels may have different needs and expectations on important factors while making purchase decisions on accommodations. In particular, the investigation of important factors influencing the selection of serviced apartments by business Travellers is interesting because the number of business Travellers has increased constantly making the new segmentation in the market.