INTRODUCTIONThe objectives of this study are twofold. Initially, it is aimed to determine the factors influencing consumers laptop purchases, and the findings of this first objective will provide the basis for the second research objective in the study. Secondly, it is intended to find out whether there are differences among consumer groups of a computer company with respect to the importance given to the factors influencing consumers laptop purchases. In the following part a brief and recent literature will be given about consumers purchase decisions.

Laptops are an integral part of todays students study kit. And with a plethora of brands inundating the market, each trying to differentiate itself from the other in terms of features, style, etc. and trying to entice the buyer with attractive offers, the decision of zeroing on the laptop has become a gruesome exercise for the student. The very nature of the product encourages the prospective buyer to go through all the stages of a typical buying process. That is the reason that I have taken up to study the students buying behavior for laptop buying. The primary objective of the project can be satisfied progressively by satisfying the secondary research objectives which are determining the factors, mapping the customer profile & perceptual mapping. A primary research based on questionnaires and analytical processing of the response will be conducted to fulfill the research objectives wherever the secondary data is not available.There are seminal studies on consumer purchase decision models in the literature, however, consumer purchase decisions vary greatly depending on the product to be purchased. Therefore, sect oral studies are needed to delineate the factors affecting consumer purchase decisions in various product markets. The International Data Corporation (IDC, 2006) report mentioned that in 2005 consumers continued to respond very positively to very attractive price points, but portabledemand in the business space remained very strong too. According to What Laptop (2005), Dell was the number one choice in worldwide with 7.9 million sales. It was followed respectively by HP (7.4 million), Toshiba (5.8 million), IBM (4.3 million), and Acer (3.9 million) in year 2004. Furthermore, revenue generated from notebooks has long surpassed desktops, thanks to higher average selling prices for notebooks. According to CRN (2006) in June 2005, notebook sales accounted for $216.1 million or $1,442.66 per notebook whereas desktops accounted for $113.9 million, or $762.98 per unit. The average notebook price fell 11.8 percent from $1,635.07 in the year-ago month and in the same period, desktop prices fell 5 percent from $803.38 (CRN, 2006). In addition, new product launches to the market, acquisitions and mergers in the sector, rapid developments in the nano-technology, integrated wireless networking, and decreased prices make it extremely vital for the companies to understand the factors underlying consumers laptop purchase decisions. The customer base of a company consists of three groups of consumers: stayers (those who had never switched from a previous brand), satisfied switchers (those who switched for reasons other than dissatisfaction), and dissatisfied switchers (those who switched because they were dissatisfied from their previous brand) (Ganesh et al., 2000). Understanding the attitudes of these three different groups of customers plays an important role when implementing effective and feasible retention and loyalty strategies. Furthermore, it is also crucial to understand whether there are differences among these groups in terms of the factors affecting their future laptop purchases when they are upgrading their computers. About acer- Acer Inc. is a Taiwanese multinational hardware and electronics corporation headquartered in Xizhi, New Taipei City, Taiwan. CEO: Jason Chen Stock price: 2353 (TPE)NT$18.050.00 (0.00%)27 Feb 1:30 pm GMT+8 - Disclaimer Founded: 1976 Headquarters: Taipei, New Taipei, Taiwan Founders: Stan Shih, Carolyn YehIndiaAcer's subsidiary in India is Acer India (Pvt) Limited, and was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Acer Computer International, Ltd. in 1999. It is a notable vendor in key segments such as education, desktop computers and low profile notebooks for education. The headquarters are in Bangalore, India.About hp- Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. Stock price: HPQ (NYSE)US$29.88+0.13 (+0.44%)28 Feb 4:03 pm GMT-5 - Disclaimer CEO: Meg Whitman Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA, United States of America Founded: January 1, 1939, Palo Alto, California, United States Founders: David Packard, William Redington Hewlett

Introduction of Acer Inc.is a Taiwanese multinational hardware and electronics corporation headquartered in Xizhi, New Taipei City, Taiwan. Acer's products include desktop and laptop PCs, tablet computers, servers, storage devices, displays, smartphones and peripherals. It also provides e-business services to businesses, governments and consumers. In 2013 Acer was the fourth largest personal computer vendor in the world. In the early 2000s, Acer implemented a new business model, shifting from a manufacturer to a designer, marketer and distributor of products, while performing production processes via contract manufacturers. In addition to its core business, Acer also owns the largest franchised computer retail chain in Taipei, Taiwan. Acers current and former slogan(s)/tagline(s) is "Explore beyond limits" and were "Empowering people"and "Empowering technology, respectively.History- acer was founded by Stan Shih his wife Carolyn Yeh, and a group of five others as Multitech in 1976, headquartered in Hsinchu City, Taiwan.It began with eleven employees and US$25,000 in capital. Initially, it was primarily a distributor of electronic parts and a consultant in the use of microprocessor technologies. It produced the Micro-Professor MPF-I training kit, then two Apple II clones; the Microprofessor II and III before joining the emerging IBM PC compatible market, and becoming a significant PC manufacturer. The company was renamed Acer in 1987.In 1989, Shih hired Leonard Liu away from a 20-year career with IBM, making him president of the Acer group and chairman and chief executive officer of Acer America Corp. Liu's managerial style reflected his experience at "Big Blue": in contrast with Shih's traditionally progressive corporate culture, Liu tried to centralize control of Acer. At the same time, the computer industry quickly matured, shifting from a high profit margin business to a low margin commodity practically overnight. Price wars pushed component prices down so rapidly, and a strong New Taiwan dollar made the country's goods so expensive, that it became difficult to make a profit on the finished product.2013 re-organization-On November 2013 Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang, and President Jim Wong, both resigned due to the company's bad financial performance. Wang had already been reportedly due to leave Acer at year's end to be replaced by Wong. Acer founder Stan Shih has taken over as board chairman and interim president as the company searches for a new candidate to assume the role of presidency. The position of CEO will be eliminated and its responsibilities transferred to the chairman or president, according to Acer in order to improve decision-making efficiency.On December 23 Acer named Jason Chen, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, as its new president and CEO, effective Jan. 1.Entertainment industry executive and former actress Nancy Hu was named CFO and Spokesperson as of May 1, 2014.Introduction ofHewlett-Packard Company or HP (styled as lower case on its official logo) is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. It provides hardware, software and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors. The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by William "Bill" Redington Hewlett and Dave Packard. HP is the world's leading PC manufacturer and has been since 2007, fending off a challenge by Chinese manufacturer Lenovo, according to Gartner. It specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software and a diverse range of printers and other imaging products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors. HP also has services and consulting business around its products and partner products. In 2013 it was the world's second-largest PC vendor by unit sales. Hewlett-Packard company events have included the spin-off of part of its business as Agilent Technologies in 1999, its merger with Compaq in 2002, the sponsor of Mission: Space in 2003, and the acquisition of EDS in 2008, Founding-Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard graduated with degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with a past professor, Frederick Terman at Stanford during the Great Depression. Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard. In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard's garage with an initial capital investment of US$538.[10] Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.HP incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.

Rationale of the Study Laptops are an integral part of todays students study kit. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce students buying decision process, by which marketers can monitor the process to develop the effective marketing mix by utilizing stimuli and factors to guide students to certain products. That is the reason that i have taken up to study the Students buying behavior for laptop buying.

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LITERATURE REVIEWLaptop & PC Industry is expected to grow fast in developing countries like India & china because of changes in government policies. In 2005, Indian government removed the import duties on Laptops, which resulted in growth of 94% in 2005. (Physorg.com, 2006) Cyber Media Research (2011) study states that nearly 10 million desktop & notebook personal computers have been installed in 2010 and thus India has estimated to cross 52 million till Dec 2010 for total installation of both.IDC is Indias quarterly PC sales marker, for the quarter ending in Oct-Dec 2010, it suggested that Indian PC market had found recovery from the effect of global recession. Compared to last quarter of 2009, Laptop market has seen the growth of 49%, while with compare to 3 rd quarter it has decreased by 7% because of High inflation & low industrial growth. (Shinde J.) According to Vadlamani S.(2011), Desktop & laptop market has achieved the growth of 6% (2.6 million units) in India in first quarter of 2011. the growth was driven by laptop vendor by 23%. Top five brands are Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo and HCL with combined market share of 57.5%. IDC(2011) wrote that, in the second quarter of 2011, the sales of laptop & desktops has decreased by 4.2% at 2.44 million units, compared to Q1 2011; Dell has again leaded the market share by 17.4%, while top 5 companies cumulating 60% market share; companies are targeting tier-3 & tier-4 cities now through large-format retails. According to Pinki Sharma, The entire study shows that Laptop usage is very much popular in between the students whether their residential status is urban and rural. Its the present day demand to run hand with the latest technology. This technology not only simplify students task but it also seem to morale boost up of the students. Students found themselves connected with the entire world with the help of Laptops. According to Dr. Nilesh B. Gajjar, The study of StudentsBehavior is quite complex, because of many variables involved and their tendency to interact with & influence each other. These are the factors controlled by external environments like the following form the basis of external influences over the mind of a customer (outer circle). Culture, and Sub-culture, Social Class, and Social Group, Family, and Inter-Personal Influences, Other Influences (which are not categorized by any of the above six, like geographical, political, economical, religious environment, etc.).According to RinalB.Shah, The research was aimed to examine the applicability of Aakersconceptual framework of customer-based brand equity for laptop brands in Indian market. Here the findings dont support completely to the entire brand equity dimensions of Aakersmodel, it was found that perceived quality and brand loyalty had a significant positive direct effect on brand equity. It had the strongest impact which indicated the essential role of development of perceived quality and brand loyalty in minds of customers to build brand equity for laptop brands. WahidaFarzana said, the purpose of the study is to explore how students psychological factors (Motivation, perception, and attitude) are associated with brand equity (brand loyalty, brand association, perceived quality, and brand awareness) of laptop. The result revealed that, students motivation to use laptop and brand association criteria work separately .Like other products, students perception for choosing laptop relies upon different sources of information. In this particular case, they choose newspaper and websites to build up their perception. Though newspaper and websites play the vital role for organizing, evaluating information, they rarely help them to choose the brand. According to Vijay R. Kulkarni, Brand & Features, Price, Visibility & Service Center, Reliability & Responsiveness, Warranty, Guarantee &Aftersales Service, are the factors which impact the buying behavior of the post graduates students. According to AdrijitBasu, There is cut throat competitions in the market on price front and so they have to find out better quality and low cost product. The characteristic of this specific industry is that the marketing defines, creates and forms the goods and their target groups. Ability to meet changing technology, customers needs and styling and shortening product life cycle are the challenges that laptop manufacturing companies will have to face.

Objectives of StudyResearch Objective Primary objective A study on Students Buying Behavior towards laptops. (Acer vshp)Secondary objective To know the preference of students while purchasing of laptops. To know the perception of students towards laptops. To study the buying pattern of students while purchasing of laptops.The objective of this kind of study is to answer the why, who, what, when and how of the Subject under consideration. I have taken descriptive because my research includes the knowing the behavior of customer towards Laptop. I have analyzed how people of various age groups respond towards laptop or their perception towards laptop.

Research Methodology STUDYThe research design is Descriptive studies. Descriptive studies are well structured, they tend to be rigid and its approach cannot be changed every now and then. Descriptive studies are undertaken in many circumstances. When the researcher is interested in knowing the characteristics of certain groups such as age, profession. When the researcher is interested in knowing the proportion of people in given population who have behaved in a particular manner, making projection of certain things.

SAMPLE UNIVERSE

Indore (MP)

SAMPLE SIZE100 Respondents SAMPLING TECHNIQUESSimple random sampling. STATISTICAL ANALYSISThe data collected will be analyzed by applying hypothesis and graphs as per requirements. THE TOOLS For Data Collection Primary data collected: Online Questionnaires Secondary data collected: Internet Research instruments: Questionnaire

For Data Analysis Data analysis will be carried out using Statistical methods.References www.google.com

www.altavista.com

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_behaviour

www.learnmarketing.net/consumer.htm

www.theglobaljournals.com/ijar/file.php?val=MTAzNQ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_Inc.

Acer. Archived from the original on 8 July 2006. Retrieved 7 July 2007.

"Gianfranco Lanci is appointed President of Acer Inc., effective January 2005" (PDF). Acer. 1 September 2004. Archived from the original on 3 April 2007. Retrieved 27 April 2007.

"HP Company Information. HP Interactive Timeline". Hewlett Packard. Retrieved July 7, 2011.

"HP Worldwide Sales and Services Directory". Welcome.hp.com. Retrieved 2012-10-07.

Rancid Taste. Available at http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Choose-a-Best-Laptop-or- Notebook-Computer-A- Complete-Guide-to-Purchase-or-Buy-a-Laptop-or-Notebook-Computer, 2011.

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