Effect Of Women's Menstrual Cycle On Consuming Behaviors

Research on relationships between women's menstrual cycle and their consuming behaviors might improve both the sellers' and the female consumers'welfare.Following two streams of literature(i.e.,premenstrual perspective,and fertility perspective),this thesis aims to explore whether and to what extent there exists some difference in consuming behaviors between women's pre-and non-premenstrual phases,and between their high-and low-fertility phases.Based on the survey data,I find that:1)Women in the premenstrual group,compared to the non-premenstrual group,present lower self-control level(i.e.,finding out fewer targets,more likely to choose hedonic foods over utilitarian goods),but do not favor the energy-consuming hedonic goods.No statistically significant difference on the risk-taking level is found between pre-and non-premenstrual groups.2)Women in the high-fertility group,compared to the low-fertility group,present higher level of sensitivity on the "loss" caused by service failure(i.e.,higher level of failure severity).The high-fertility group tends to be more impulsive while facing image-improving products,but also not reaching the conventional statistical significance level.Besides,manipulating the participants' menstrual attitude has no significant effect on the difference of self-control level between the pre-and non-premenstrual groups.Also,providing potential mating cues to participants has no significant effect on the difference of perceived failure severity between the high-and low-fertility groups.While not-much empirical research combining premenstrual phase and self-control,and little study directly focusing on the links between fertility and service failure,my thesis enriches the understanding on these issues and might inspire more future research.As the findings are just based on specific samples and specific measurement/scene materials,future study could extend the sample size,collect data from participants with different demographic characteristics,or use different measurement/scene materials.