Marketers have always been interested in the lifestyle of individuals. They deal with the daily behaviororiented facets of people, their feelings, attitudes, interests and opinions. A lifestyle marketing perspective recognizes that people sort themselves into groups on the basis of the things they like to do, how they like to spend their leisure time and how they choose to spend their disposable income. This paper focuses on how lifestyle influences the brand choice behavior of respondents while deciding on the purchase of durable goods. It aims to analyze the lifestyles of people in Chennai and identify the underlying lifestyle dimensions that can be used as a basis to segment consumers, and determine the influence of their lifestyles on the brand choice patterns of respondents in the purchase of durables goods. Consumers often choose products, services and activities over others because they are associated with a certain lifestyle. Products are the building blocks of lifestyle. Marketers should therefore, have a complete idea of the changing lifestyles of consumers, so as to segment them and position their products successfully.

A lifestyle marketing perspective recognizes that people sort themselves into groups on the basis of the things they like to do, how they like to spend their leisure time and how they choose to spend their disposable income. Consumers often choose products, services and activities over others because they are associated with a certain lifestyle. For this reason, lifestylemarketing strategies attempt to position a product by fitting it into an existing pattern of consumption.

The relationship of the product used by the consumers has been extensively studied in the past. According to Cosmas (1982), there is a relationship between a person's lifestyle and his total product assortment. Knowledge of the lifestyle patterns helps the marketer explain why certain segments use/do not use certain brands. Reynolds and Darden (1972) concluded that a person makes a choice in a consumption environment in order to actualize his lifestyle pattern

According to Alpert and Gatty (1969), an individual's brand choice has been conceived as a function of his lifestyle. Numerous product specific studies show evidence establishing relationship between lifestyle and brand choice. They include studies on automobiles, convenience foods and beverages.

Management Research Journal, Consumption Environment, Research Methodology, Principal Component Analysis, Cluster Analysis, Analysis of Variance, ANOVA, Chisquare Test, Lifestyle Marketing, Healthcare Research, Advertisement Research, Southern Marketing Association.