Analysis of Gender Differences in the Perception of Reasons of Failure in Automobile Sector

Every product or service necessarily passes through its life cycle. The life cycle involves five distinct stages: product development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. However due to rapid technological changes, stiff competition and changing customer preferences, the length of product life cycle is getting shortened. In today's challenging world, even legendary brands struggle to stay in the mature stage for a long time.

Today Indian roads are clogged by many different makes and models of automobiles. One time favourites Ambassador and Fiat are sidelined by new entrants such as Maruti, Hyundai, Ford, Tata, and Volkswagen by their stiff competition, generational shifts or technological innovations either in product or processes. The same is true in two wheeler industry too. Failure or delay to adopt changes/innovations lead to downtimes and affect the production; which in turn affects the goodwill of the customer as well as profitability.

The study aims (i) to understand whether the respondents have shown the significant association in the ranking of the reasons of failures or not (ii) to check whether these reasons are influenced differently by the male&female respondents.

The initial survey was conducted with 121 respondents which include 64 male&57 female respondents. This article use Kendall's coefficient of concordance (W) with Chi Square (χ²) values with (N-1) degree of freedom to identify significant association in field survey data. The F-test is used to check the equality of variances of two normal populations to understand whether there is considerable difference between the male&female perception while ranking.

The findings signify that the respondents are applying essentially the same standard in ranking the reasons of failure&there are no significant differences in male&female perception in assessing the reasons of failures.