Working Women’s Perception towards usage of Ready to Cook Food Products: a Study with Reference to Thane City

: Diet is a vital part of any living being. Food is the constituent consumed to provide nutritive value and sustenance to all the living being. In the present-day scenario, one can see women perception has changed drastically being job well-being or health. With an upsurge of urbanization, shifting from joint families to nuclear families, shifting nature of jobs and businesses, lack of time, expediency and change in lifestyle, have led women’s preferences move from fresh and healthy nutrition to the food which is ready to cook food products. Ready to cook food requires less time and energy to cook in comparison to traditional method. Ready to cook food products are prepared and packed in such a way that there is a very little or no need for preparations before consumption. Therefore, it can be used straightforwardly at any time as per ease. This paper provides an insight about the working women's Perception towards using the Ready to cook products in thane city. It also encompasses the factors which influence the women buying and usage decision of ready to cook products.


I. INTRODUCTION
Earlier women were not so career oriented, but now the scenario has changed.Now a days in most of the organization women are at the top position.Women have stepped out of home to earn or to be a helping hand to family in monetary terms.Home maker women used to cook everything by themselves.But now a day's trends have changed.Today, women are also working as they want to live an independent life and this is why they are not able to give more and more time to their household chores.It is difficult for a working woman to manage their work and household chores simultaneously.From years there has been various changes in the consumption pattern of Indian people, from raw to cook and from cook to ready to cook food.Taking opportunity of this situation many companies whether small business or multinational companies have come up with many ready to cook food products like instant noodles, vermicelli, gulab jamuns, instant idli, vada, dosa mix, Dhokla mix, gravy mix etc. which attracted more and more working women.Today, a working woman prefers ready to cook food products more over cooking traditionally as it consumes less time.Although a working women perception towards a products or service is based on their actual experience.The other factors which affect the perception of a working women towards usage of ready to cook food products are:  Price  Quality  Easy availability  Taste  Reputation II.REVIEW OF LITERATURE Review of literature is carried out on the theme of study to analyse the research gap.
 Singh and Singh (1981) in his article entitled "A Study of Brand Loyalty in India", mentioned that a consumer's loyalty towards brand depends upon the nature of a product.Nature of a product can be related to luxuries or necessities.In addition to this, brand choice and store loyalty also affects the brand loyalty of the consumer.The factors which influences the loyalty towards a brand were quality of product, habit of use, readiness and availability. Kamalaveni and Nirmala (2000) in their article entitled "Consumer Behaviour in Instant Food Products" stated that there was almost same agreement between ranking given by the housewives and working women regarding the reasons which are influencing them to buy instant food products.The study also acknowledged that age, occupation, education, family size, and annual income had more impact. Verma and Surender Munjal (2003) in his article entitled "Brand Loyalty Correlates: Study of FMCGs", point out that quality, quantity, price, availability, packaging and advertisement are the major factors to make a brand choice decision.The brand loyalty is a function of behavioural and learning pattern of customer.Age and other demographic variables mainly affected the behavioural & learning pattern of the customers while the other demographic characteristic like gender or marital status did not mainly affected the behavioural and learning pattern of the customers. Narang (2006) in his article entitled "A study on Branded Foods", mentioned that the buyers do not prefer only one brand in case of food purchasing.He/she is able to go for different brand names when they do their purchasing.Repetitive advertising can be used as an important tool to make them recognize the brand names easily.The product should be made in such a way that it will look trendy and fashionable as well so that this will attract more and more teenage group people/ young people.He further suggests that more promotional schemes should be used such as discount, offers, coupons and free offers this will help to increase rate  Nagaraja ( 2004) stated that, buying behaviour of a consumer is mainly influenced by their own experience, experience of their own family& friends and experience of their neighbor consumer.The involvements of his own family members have maximum influence on his purchases.Above all, the quality of the product and its easy availability were the primary determinants of his buying behaviour. Rajarashmi and Sudarsana (2004) revealed that, almost all the sample respondents preferred to purchase branded products and if their favourite brand is not available in one shop they go to another shop to purchase their favourite brand.If their favourite brand is not available in the market they are ready to postpone their purchase. Peter and Jerry (1979) in their article entitled "Brand knowledge among Consumers Relates to the Cognitive Representation of the Brand Consumers" stated that brand knowledge can be classified in terms of personal experience about a brand stored in consumer's mind, that is, all descriptive and evaluative brands related information. Ramasamy (2005) reported that, the awareness and attitude towards a particular product plays a major role in influencing the buying behaviour of a consumer.The most important sources of information are advertisements which are displayed on televisions, newspaper, magazines, radio etc.The various products features play an important role to build up a consumer's opinion about the product and decision making process.Many respondents said that the quality and price of a product is the most important factors and on the other hand other respondents said that the image of manufacturer is the most important factor. Rees (1992), in his study mentioned that taste, quality, quantity, packaging, advertisement about the product, awareness, decrease in the traditional way of cooking, different views of family members, increase in "snacking" time are some of the important factors which influences the consumer's choice of food.There was a strong increase in sale of chilled and other prepared foods as it helps single people, hostlers and working women to save their time. Kumar (1987) in his study observed the factors influencing the buying decision making of 200 respondents for various food products.Country of origin and brand of the products were cross-tabulated (conversion of a list of words into a table of numbers) against age, gender and income.According to the results revealed the main factors taken into consideration were age, education and income.As consumers are attracted by the brands the image of a brand seemed to be more important than the introduction of the product. Joglekar A and Kundle S ( 2013) "Consumer awareness about convenience food among working and nonworking women" have opined that Convenience food is the result of modern technological advances in the field of food processing, preservation techniques and the invention of various newer food additives.Convenience foods minimize the working time but it doesn't save us from consuming high preservatives, extra sodium and hydrogenated fats." Ritu Anand (2011), "A study of determinants impacting consumers food choice with reference to the fast-food consumption in India", Signifies the key determinants impacting consumers food choice are passion for eating, socializing etc. Findings indicate that fast food companies can no longer rely on convenience as USP in India, unless the implications of same on consumer's health is given equal importance in the years to come.
III. PROBLEM STATEMENT In today's busy environment a person's time is considered as a most important factor.Earlier women were not allowed to go for work but now a days they also want to live an independent life and this is why they prefer to go for work.Due to rapid transitions in under developing countries population resulted an increase in their food consumption pattern.It was found through different researches that non-preference for ready to cook food was due to various reasons like lowcost in-home preparation, differences in taste, customized recipes, lack of adoption of ready to cook food by all family members, higher prices, lack of awareness and non-availability of ready to cook food products.It was also found that difference between the taste of home-made and ready to cook food products prevent consumers from buying ready to cook food products because most of family members disliked packed foods.It was also experienced that they perceive ready to cook food products as cheaper sources of nutrition.Thus, the study intends to understand the working women perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.
IV. SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY Now a day's women are also working.Some are working to become independent while others are working to be a helping hand for family's income.While working, it becomes difficult for women to handle their office work as well as their household work simultaneously.Their energy gets divided between office and household work.This becomes the reason that the working women are unable to give time to themselves, to family, relatives and sometimes for office work also.All these reasons gave a demand for ready to cook food products.Using ready to cook food products have made a working women life a little bit easier.Using ready to cook food product is less time consuming as compared to traditional way of cooking.Mostly, less time consumption factor attracted women towards ready to cook food products.The present research paper attempts to understand the relationship between variable like age, education, income, family size, family type, marital status and Working women's perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.

V. OBJECTIVES
The study is descriptive in nature and tries to analyse working women's perception towards usage of ready to cook food products with reference to Thane city.The study attempts to achieve the following objectives: 1. To analyse the demographic profile of women who use ready to cook products of Thane city.2. To study the relationship between demographic variables and working women's perception towards usage of ready to cook food products 3. 3.To provide suggestion on working women's perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.

VI. RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
The study is based on the following hypotheses.
 H01 -there is no significant association between age and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products. H02 -there is no significant association between education and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products. H03 -there is no significant association between marital status and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.Relationship between demographic variables and working women perception towards usage of ready to cook food products of Thane city.H01 -there is no significant association between age and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.Source -Computed from primary data.(Level of significance 0.05) The output of the ANOVA analysis reveals that the 'P' value for all parameters in table no. 1 is less than 0.05 and the test statistic 'F' is not in the 95% region of acceptance.Since p-value<α, H0 is rejected.The hypothesis that there is no significant association between Age and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products stands rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted.
H02 -there is no significant association between education and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.The output of the ANOVA analysis reveals that the 'P' value for all parameters in table no. 1 is less than 0.05 and the test statistic 'F' is not in the 95% region of acceptance.Since p-value<α, H0 is rejected.The hypothesis that there is no significant association between education and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products stands rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted.H03 -there is no significant association between marital status and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.The output of the ANOVA analysis reveals that the 'P' value for all parameters in table no. 1 is less than 0.05 and the test statistic 'F' is not in the 95% region of acceptance.Since p-value<α, H0 is rejected.The hypothesis that there is no significant association between marital status and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products stands rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted except for the parameter easy availability.
H04 -there is no significant association between family type and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.Source -Computed from primary data.(Level of significance 0.05) The output of the ANOVA analysis reveals that the 'P' value for all parameters in table no. 1 is less than 0.05 and the test statistic 'F' is not in the 95% region of acceptance.Since p-value<α, H0 is rejected.The hypothesis that there is no significant association between family type and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products stands rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted.
H05 -there is no significant association between family size and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.Source -Computed from primary data.(Level of significance 0.05) The output of the ANOVA analysis reveals that the 'P' value for all parameters in table no. 1 is less than 0.05 and the test statistic 'F' is not in the 95% region of acceptance.Since p-value<α, H0 is rejected.The hypothesis that there is no significant association between family size and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products stands rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted.H06 -there is no significant association between income and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.Rejected There is significant association between age and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.HA2 Rejected There is significant association between education and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.

HA3
Rejected There is significant association between marital status and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.

HA4
Rejected There is significant association between family type and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.HA5 Rejected There is significant association between family size and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.HA6 Rejected There is significant association between income and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products.
XII. FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS Some of the major findings and conclusions of the study based on the analysis are presented hereunder.
1. Majority of respondents i.e.,25 respondents lie between age group of up to 20 years, indicating that relatively high proportion of young women prefer ready to cook food products.2. With reference to education majority respondents i.e., 23 are post graduates.The finding establishes the facts that the women who opted for ready to cook food products are well qualified and educated.3. The study reveals that out of 100 total respondents 63 respondents are married i.e., maximum married women opt to use ready to cook products.4. With respect to family size 38 respondents have 2-4 family members.It reveals that maximum small family women opt for ready to cook food products.5. Out of 100 respondents selected, 58 respondents belong to nuclear family.It indicates that majority of single families opt for ready to cook food products.6.The study states that 31 respondents draw salary ranging between Rs. 30001-Rs.45000.It indicates that respondents from higher income group are more engaged to prefer ready to cook food products.7. The findings reveal that there is significant relationship between age, education, marital status, family size, ANALYSIS & INTERPRETATION: Demographic profile of the working women perception towards usage of ready to cook food products of Thane city Graph no. 1 Demographic profile of selected working women Source -Primary data Demographic profile helps to understand the socio economic back ground of the respondents who use ready to cook products.The above graph no. 1, represent the demographic profile of the women selected for the study.Its reveals that out of 100 respondents selected for study, 25 respondents lie between age group of up to 20 years, 21 respondents belong to age group 21 to 30 years, 18 respondents lie in age group of 31 to 40 years, 24 respondents lie in the age category of 41 to 50 years, whereas 12 respondents lie in the age category of 50 years and above.With reference to education 10 respondents have completed SSC, 18 respondents are HSC qualified, 29 respondents are Graduate, and 23 post graduates whereas 20 respondents possess other professional qualification.With reference to marital status 63 respondents are married and rest unmarried.With respect to family size 38 respondents have 2-4 family members, 27 respondents have 4-6 family members whereas 35 respondents have 35 more than 6 family members.With regard to family type 58 respondents belong to nuclear family and rest to joint family.The income level revealed that 20 respondents had income between below Rs. 15000, 26 respondents income ranges between Rs.15001-Rs.30000, 31 respondents draw salary ranging between Rs. 30001-Rs.45000 whereas 23 respondents had income above Rs.45000.

Table 1
ANOVA test -Age and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products

Table 2
Source -Computed from primary data.(Level of significance 0.05)

Table 3
ANOVA test -Marital status and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products

Table 4
ANOVA test -Family type and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products

Table 5
ANOVA test -Family size and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products

Table 6
The output of the ANOVA analysis reveals that the 'P' value for all parameters in table no. 1 is less than 0.05 and the test statistic 'F' is not in the 95% region of acceptance.Since p-value<α, H0 is rejected.The hypothesis that there is no significant association between income and perception towards usage of ready to cook food products stands rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted.