As one of the factors influencing consumers purchase behavior, decision-making
styles are crucial for understanding consumer shopping behavior and for developing
successful marketing strategies. Decision-making styles have been mainly viewed as a
relatively enduring consumer personality that seldom changes even when applied to
different goods and situations. Recently, a study showed that consumer decision-making
styles are influenced by product type, suggesting that decision-making styles are
individual response patterns in a specific decision context rather than personality trait
based. Despite extensive research regarding consumer decision making styles, relatively
little attention has been paid to identify whether consumer decision-making styles are
truly personality trait based or context-dependent. Thus, this work challenged the theory
that decision-making styles are personality trait based and investigated whether decisionmaking
styles are context dependent.
Three independent studies, focusing on extending our knowledge regarding
consumer decision-making styles, were conducted. The first study examined whether
consumer decision-making styles depend on channel type (online versus offline channels). In addition, it explored new types of decision-making styles which better
represent current consumer needs and preferences. Study results supported previous
arguments suggesting that decision-making styles are not personality trait based but vary
across contexts. Results also demonstrated the need to continuously observe consumers’
decision-making styles and capture emerging new styles. The second study explored
whether product characteristics, specifically intangibility and non-standardization,
influence consumer decision-making styles in an online context. At the same time, this
study examined whether there is any interaction effect between product type and product
involvement. The results showed that certain types of online decision-making styles are
influenced by product type. The results also showed that product involvement has an
important role in influencing online decision-making styles. The third study investigated
whether consumer online decision-making styles influence loyalty toward online travel
agencies. The results of the study provide support for five out of eleven hypotheses,
indicating that consumers’ online decision-making styles significantly influence loyalty
toward online travel agencies. Finally, the overall findings, limitations of the studies,
agenda for future research, and practical and theoretical implications were discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1611 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Park, Young A |
| Contributors | Gretzel, Ulrike |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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