
Consumer Behaviour in Services 99
5.2 Services Marketing Insight
Middle-class Consumers: The Potential Market for a
Host of Services
The middle class in India is the most attractive
group for companies. The strength of the Indian
market lies with middle-income consumers. Ac-
cording to a study by the NCAER, in 1998 India had
a middle class of 53.4 million households with an
annual income of INR 45,000 to 215,000. Out of
them, 27.5 million households lived in urban areas,
and 25.9 million households lived in rural areas.
The total number of middle-income consumers
was around 297 million. The middle class consti-
tuted 30 per cent of the population ...