Eco-friendly buying behaviour of women: a study with special reference to Guwahati city, India

Abstract

Simply, buying behaviour is nothing but a study of how individuals make decision in spending their available resources (time, money and effort) on consumption of different household objects. When people consider environment as an important factor to be protected through their friendly behaviour in purchasing household objects then it is called eco-friendly buying behaviour. Today’s women are often called as ‘homemaker’. Now a day, almost in all families, women play as the chief ‘purchase officer’, controlling all kinds of purchase decisions. She has accomplished this financial freedom by her sheer ability to compete in the male-dominated world. The New Indian Woman (NIW) is a hard working, multi-tasked who juggles her role as home maker and professional woman. Today Indian woman has  a greater sense of empowerment and economic freedom and this indicates that her consumption pattern has been changed. From general observations it can be said that now a day, women love for shopping as they like to purchase their own household objects at their own choice and necessity. There are some common factors which always influence a person to take decision in consumption of related items and therefore, the very first objective of the study is to identify those factors. The second objective of the study is to have an idea about the eco-friendly buying behaviour of women in Guwahati city. In achieving the above mentioned objectives, descriptive survey method has been used and it was observed that majority of the respondents had a moderate extent of environment friendly buying behaviour in the selected household objects.