سبک های تصمیم گیری مصرف کننده و رفتار خرید بازار : ساخت تئوری با استفاده از تجزیه و تحلیل اکتشافی داده ها و روش مقایسه ای

This article assesses how consumers' decision-making styles relate to their shopping mall behavior and their global evaluations of shopping malls. Based on exploratory data analysis including the use of the comparative method, the article provides a theoretical model of antecedents and consequences of consumer-decision making styles. Data for this report come from personal face-to-face mall intercepts of shoppers (n=527) in two super-regional (West Edmonton Mall and Mall of America in Bloomington) and two regional (Pier 39 in San Francisco and Forum Shops in Las Vegas) malls. The EDA results support a complex view of the antecedents and consequences of consumer decision-making styles. The article concludes with specific suggestions for extending psychological theory of shopping behavior and advancing strategic mall-retailing strategies.

Similar to the work on cognitive styles in psychology (e.g., see Sternberg and Grigorenko, 1997) and beginning with the seminal work of Stone (1954), the literature consumer decision-making (CDM) styles have a fairly long but varied history in the context of theory and research in retailing. Sproles and Kendall (1986) define a CDM style as “a mental orientation characterizing a consumer's approach to making choices.” The work of Westbrook and Black (1985) and Hiu, Siu, Wang, and Chang (2001) include CDM styles literature reviews from 1954 to 1985 and 1986 to 2001, respectively. The substantial majority of studies in both these early and later research streams focus on confirming the existence of styles of thinking applied to consumer shopping cognitions and that segmenting consumers (e.g., clustered) into a limited number of meaningful groups by their responses to CDM style inventories is possible and useful. Few studies attempt to thoroughly explore the antecedents and consequences of CDM styles (Hiu et al., 2001 is an exception to this observation). This article proposes and illustrates the use of an exploratory data analysis (EDA) approach for developing a theory of antecedents and consequences of CDM styles. The research includes examining the propositions that (1) shopping contexts (e.g., shopping in regional versus local area malls) theoretically should not affect the structure of CDM styles; (2) at least some CDM styles moderately relate with each other; (3) most shoppers identify themselves as applying more than one but less than most CDM styles (i.e., shoppers recognize that some specific styles do not apply to their shopping orientations); (4) demographic variables affect CDM styles; (5) CDM styles relate with shoppers' planned expenditure levels; (6) CDM styles relate directly to global satisfaction with mall shopping; and (7) CDM styles affect the activities shoppers engage in. Findings from the EDA of survey responses from samples of shoppers in four North American malls support the first six but not the sixth proposition. The results of the study supports a complex view that consumers are capable and prone to applying more than one CDM style when shopping and that the impact of CDM styles on shopping activities is more indirect than direct. The findings from the present study confirm and extend Sproles and Kendall's (1986, p. 268) previously unexplored speculation that a person does not follow one CDM style in all shopping decisions. The most useful view regarding CDM styles may be that many consumers adopt two to three approaches to making choices and rarely apply all styles proposed theoretically and found in shopping research; the present article confirms the possibility that a substantial share of consumers are not oriented strongly to any one CDM style. Thus, a substantial share of shoppers exists that rarely use each of the eight to ten CDM styles (e.g., Sproles and Kendall, 1986 and Tai, 2005). This article includes the following sections. Following this introduction, Section two proposes a theory of CDM styles including antecedents and consequences relating to styles. Section three briefly summarizes the empirical method and approach to analyzing the data for probing the theory. The research method includes a survey data collection instrument and the use of a mall-intercept face-to-face interview method; the analyses include exploratory data analysis (EDA) including a comparative method approach to survey data. Section four presents findings. Section five discusses conclusions and implications for further theory development and retail management practice. Section six closes the article with limitations, and suggestions for further research.

The main conclusion is that empirical research does support the existence of CDM styles among adult mall shoppers in different mall contexts. Gender is a prime antecedent associating with CDM styles. The influence of CDM styles on mall shopping consequences is subtle and indirectly influences activities during mall visits via influencing planned expenditure levels. Consumers very high in perfectionism are most likely to high in planned mall expenditures. CDM styles associate substantially with visitor satisfaction with visiting shopping malls. Further work on CDM styles needs to further address the study of antecedents and consequences and to further clarify the variety of types of consumers by multiple style orientations. Mall and retail store strategists may find that communicating to shoppers by certain shoppers' CDM style orientations is likely to be effective in increasing their shoppers' planned expenditures levels—not by changing the expenditures planned but by changing the clientele toward customers planning high expenditures.