| The fastest growing Asian American markets with substantial buying power are the Filipino-Americans. With a population of 2.9 million, the Filipino-Americans register a total purchasing power of ;A business organization needs to include the group's cultural insights into their core marketing strategies to tap or increase its share of the Filipino-American market. This is an important marketing consideration since people from different cultures think, feel, and act differently. These cultural idiosyncrasies can contribute to the variations in the online consumers' decision-making habits or styles. As part of cultural adaptation, acculturation plays a role in shaping the consumers' purchase decisions. Understanding the effect of acculturation on the decision-making styles of Filipino-Americans will provide businesses an opportunity to determine the group's pre-purchase behavior in electronic commerce.;This quantitative study aimed to: 1) determine the online decision-making styles of Filipino-Americans; 2) examine the impact of acculturation with regard to the identified decision-making styles of Filipino-Americans; and 3) determine the extent of relationship between the two acculturation dimensions, i.e., ethnic and host culture identifications, and the identified online decision-making styles. Research participants included a sample group of Filipino-American adults living in the United States selected through purposive sampling technique. A web-based questionnaire containing two survey instruments with previously validated scales was used in the research. The modified Consumer Styles Inventory instrument for online purchases was utilized to determine the consumers' decision-making styles, and the ARSMA-II instrument adapted for Filipino-Americans was used to measure acculturation.;The findings of the study indicated that Filipino-American consumers differed in their decision-making styles when shopping for products or services from online stores. These differences were found to be associated with the group members' level of acculturation. Such understanding could provide valuable information to business organizations towards developing an effective marketing strategy to improve market sales as well as to address the needs of the Filipino-American community. Recommendations for future research could include examining the relationship between acculturation and decision-making styles of Filipino-Americans within the context of a specific product category. Possible approaches for further inquiries on this subject include replicating the study using probability methods for better generalizability as well as exploring the progression of behavior variations of the said ethnic group over time through longitudinal research. |
