“Consumer Perceptions of Global and Local Brands in the Indian ...

in interpretating the responses. However danger exits that the interviewer will edit theresponses to those which seem to be most appropriate, or most required.In the current research face to face semi interviews were conducted to gather empiricalmaterial. According to Saunders et al (1997) face to face interviews consist of openended questions thus allowing the respondent to describe the perceptions in detail.Researchers have a list of themes and questions to be covered and can vary frominterview to inter looking at the appropriateness. This form of an interview provided theresearcher with the prospect of exploring answers where the researcher wantedinterviewees to explain and build up on the responses and obtain facts. The interviewswere conducted in the homes of the informants (all lived in apartments or with parents),lasted for 45 minutes to one hour. In each interview I sought to elicit numerousperceptions of consumers towards brands and what are the main cues of a brand that leadthem towards purchase of global brands. The conversations were loosely structured byquestions that introduced the importance of various factors like Country of Origin,Culture, Quality of Product and Services in evaluating consumer decision for brandpurchases. The interview structures for the executives were built around managerialperceptions about key attributes of a brand that deliver customer satisfaction. Theinterviews with managers and consumers enabled to uncover the discrepancies that existin perceptions between both the groups.3.6Conducting the InterviewsA pilot interview was conducted before interviewing the actual chosen respondents. Themain purpose of this pilot interview was to test the designed questions for flaws. Thepilot interview helped the researcher to examine the flaws in the questions that weredesigned and accordingly rectify the mistakes. The pilot interview was conducted with arespondent from Mumbai (India). During the pilot interview it was discovered that globalbrands were really popular with the upper middle and middle class that is basically IndiaOne. Brands were consumed as symbols of status and self-identity only among the uppermiddle classes. The lower classes that is India Two and Three did not give too muchimportance to global branding. The consumption patterns between all the three classesvary distinctively. Thus in order to make the study meaningful the researcher focused onConsumer perceptions of Global and Local Brands in the Indian retail Industry 39