In Indian scenario, perceptions about a particular brand are important because Indian customers rely on the perception of their near and dear ones before actually buying or using the product. The perceptions of the people around us affect our decision to buy or not to buy the product. Perceptions are highly subjective and thus easily distorted. The qualm of buying and not buying continues into the mind or the black box of the prospective consumer unless his decision is not supported by many. Thus in order to survive in the marketing environment of a country like India, brands need to be positioned in the minds of people. India is already an attractive destination for brands to set in due to favorable marketing conditions. India has known to be a hub of Herbal brands as well since the herbal products are deeply associated with the spirituality sentiments of the people. A WHO (World Health Organization) study estimates that about 80 percent of world population depends on natural products for their health care instead of modern medicines primarily because of side effects and high cost of modern medicine (Sharma, Shanker, Tyagi, Singh, & Rao, 2008) The worldwide herbal market products are around $6.2 billion and estimated to reach $5 trillion by the year 2050 (WHO & Kumar & Janagam, 2011) This paper carries out a study on what factors affect buying decision of the buyers for brand PATANJALI.

"Patanjali "-a brand set up by PATANJALI AYURVEDA LTD is backed by robust preaching and promotion of World renowned Guru Swami Ramdevji and an international authority on Ayurveda and Traditional Herbs. The company is set up with an objective to provide superior quality of products at fair price and to get their customers rid off the chronic diseases by providing products which are organic and natural. This concept of Herbal and Pure has gained momentum in India and across the world since people now a days are more centered towards keeping themselves near to Nature due to their commercialized routines. PATANJALI AYURVEDA LTD has more than 100 different products in the catalogue for Skin, Hair, Heart, Eyes and Kidney diseases. Patanjali's recent tie up with Future Group to enter into FMCG segment through Big Bazaar Retail stores is another big advantage towards the availability of Patanjali Products near to their consumers. The Patanjali Products have rightly been placed at advantage by the very concept of "Marketing through Spirituality" II.

The study in hand is conducted keeping in view the following objectives: ? To study the brand perception of 'PATANJALI' in minds of Consumers ? To know the attributes that a customer keeps in mind while buying 'PATANJALI' Products ? To study the satisfaction level of consumers after using 'PATANJALI' Products III.

This paper is based on primary data collected through questionnaires from 100 users of Patanjali Products within Punjab. The questionnaire design is built up to know the type of products people use, the reason for their buying such product and their post buying satisfaction level from that product. Secondary sources have been used to collect information about 'Patanjali' brands. Journals, articles, research reports and government documents were reviewed to get the insight of the previous interventions that the stakeholders and policy makers have already in place. Also websites of natural products manufacturing company and online Customer Perception towards Brand: A Study on 'Patanjali' he ever changing marketing scenario and heightened competition over the globe has amplified the role of brand at unparalleled level. Every person is a consumer of different brands at the same time. The choice and usage of a particular brand by the consumer over the time is affected by the quality benefits offered by the brand especially when it comes to brand of eatables and cosmetics. Consumer satisfaction is derived when he compares the actual performance of the product with the performance he expected out of the usage.

Philip Kotler (2008) observed that satisfaction is a person's feelings of pressure or disappointment resulting from product's perceived performance (outcome) in relation to his or her expectations. If the perceived benefits turned out to be almost same as expected, customer is highly satisfied and that is how the company achieves loyalty of the customer towards the products. That above table summarizes the characteristics ofusers of Patanjali products. Out of 100 users, dominant portion i.e. nearly 2/3 rd of the users age between 20-40 years. Looking at the gender distribution, 70% of the users taken under study are females who can perceive to be more interested in buying herbal cosmetics. In Occupation frequency, nearly half of the users are students who are pursuing studies followed by 35% of service class users. The purchasers of Patanjali products are significantly from low income group having and income below 1 lakh. This is because the significant portions of users are students who have little or no Income.

The values of correlation among the factors which affect buying decision of the users is given below:

The correlation values among the factors affecting buying decisions are mostly positively correlated. Income of the users has negative correlation with reasonable price but not so significant. This is because most of the users under study fall under low or no income group so they are dependent upon others for buying the Patanjali products; price is not of so significance to them. Income is strongly and positively correlated to good quality since people are ready to pay to spend significant portion of their income on good quality. Income has negative correlation with 'experience of others' factor. Since people do not consider their income level if they get a positive opinion from people in order to get their problem healed. Reasonable price is strongly correlated with good quality as quality demands cost. On the other hand, good quality has negative correlation with Advertising of Patanjali Products since quality can only be assured after using the product not only through advertising. Health benefit is highly correlated to Good quality but negatively correlated to income as users do not look into the pocket friendliness in hope of extracting the cure to the problem they are looking for. Brand Image is positively correlated to availability (.466) as products with good brand image are easily taken away by distributors. The 'natural and pure' factor shows positive correlation (.289) with 'Swadeshi' which shows the spiritual sentiments of Indian people attached to the Indian Brand 'Patanjali'. Influencing factor for 'Swadeshi' is endorsement of brand by Baba Ramdevji. The followers of Baba Ramdevji seem to believe in Swadeshi factor and thus show positive correlation (0.393). Also, the informative nature of products is positively correlated to name of Baba Ramdevji (0.429) which means the expected health benefits to be derived from the product is well endorsed by Baba Ramdevji which induce the followers to buy the product.

For the purpose of regression, satisfaction level of the user is taken as dependent variable and attributes of products are independent variables. We assume H 0 The customers are dissatisfied by using Patanjali Products and hence, they willnot buy product again.

So we regress the satisfaction of customer on the factors which together make up his buying decision. We also regress 'buying again' factor to other attributes of product to further study the satisfaction of the user, because if a customer is satisfied, the user will purchase the product again. The above table shows that about 29% variability in satisfaction level of customer is explained by the dependent variables. The significance level is .015 which is less than 0.05, so we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that users aresatisfied using the Patanjali products. The above table shows that value of p<0.001 in all cases except in case of advertising depicting the rejection of Null hypothesis in all other cases accept advertising. That means advertising of 'Patanjali' is effective to post buying satisfaction level of people because of claims made by the advertisers in their ads from experience of others.

The Findings in the paper show that there are many significant factors that together make up the buying decision of the product. Customers' perception towards a brand is built largely on the satisfactory value the user receives after paying for the product and the benefits the user looks for. In the above study, a large portion of the user is satisfied from Patanjali products. It may be because of reasonable price of the product. It may be due to ability of the product to cure the problem. The satisfaction brings in the retention of customer. Patanjali is enjoying the advantageous position in market through spirituality element involved in its products. However, it should not ignore the competitors like Naturals, pure roots, Vindhya herbals. Patanjali in order to retain more customers and satisfy them,must fulfill the claims made by the company before any other brand may mushroom up and take away the benefits of marketing through spirituality.

The results of the study may not be generalized because researcher followed convenient sampling method. Moreover, the study includes students with zero income which may not give conclusive results as income affects the buying capacity too. Also, Researcher could not gather much data from age group of 55 and above. The bias cannot be excluded since the researcher only reached out to accessible area to distribute and gather information. Time and resource constraint are other limitations too.

The researcher undertakes to Thank Mr. Sanjeet Singh (Asstt. Director of Research at Chandigarh University) for giving opportunity to conduct research and offer unparalleled support, Dr. Bhupinder Chahal (Associate prof. at Chandigarh University) for incepting the very idea of topic and all the respondents who provided valuable time to give required responses. The researcher is indebted to her parents for unconditional guidance and moral support required for completion of the project.