UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER’S MOTIVATION TO PURCHASE A SMARTWATCH: A STUDY OF CUSTOMERS IN TIER-2 CITIES

The Covid-19 pandemic channelized people’s attention towards health consciousness and personal fitness. The market for the smart wearables like wrist bands and smart watches that were introduced in the early 2000’s grew exponentially post pandemic. Combining a smartphone with a health monitoring gadget can detect chronic illness and encourage a healthy way of life. The present study tries to find the variables that influence the consumers of tier 2 cities to buy smart watches. The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 model has been used for the study. The data for the study was collected from the users of smart watches in the tier 2 cities of North Karnataka. A structured questionnaire was designed and was distributed among the respondents in the Google forms format. The present study utilised SEM using SPSS AMOS for analysing data from 158 respondents. The study discovered that behavioural intentions of the customers in tier 2 cities was significantly influenced by factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, price value, hedonic motivation, and facilitating conditions. Social influence as a factor had no significant influence on the behavioural intention of customers in tier 2 cities while purchasing a smartwatch.