A Study On Cultural Differences In Consumer Decision-Making Styles Of Chinese And American Working Females

Consumer decision-making styles are mental orientations characterizing a consumer's approach to making choices (Sproles & Kendall, 1986), which are important to marketing because they determine consumer behavior, and are relatively stable over time and thus are relevant to market segmentation. Different cultural settings have different impacts on consumer decision-making styles. Therefore, the marketers have to become fully aware of cultural differences in consumer decision-making styles when exploring foreign markets.China and the United States are highly dissimilar in cultures. The current research will integrate the concept of Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI) with Hofstede's cultural typology to test empirically the differences in consumer decision-making styles between Chinese and American working females and to find out how cultures influence their decision-making styles. Eight hypotheses concerning eight aspects of consumer decision-making styles are proposed. The empirical study will investigate whether they can be supported and the results in return verify whether there exist differences in consumer decision-making styles between the two countries.The dissertation analyzes the cultural influences on eight aspects of consumer decision-making styles. The findings indicate that significant differences in consumer decision-making styles of working females exist between the two countries. Chinese working female consumers are more quality-conscious, brand-conscious, recreation-conscious, confused by overchoice, and brand-loyal. American counterparts appear to be more innovative, impulsive and price-conscious when shopping.Although the size of samples used in current research is not very large, the findings, to certain degree, still prove that cultures do have significant impacts on consumer decision-making styles of Chinese and American working females. This is also very useful to international marketers who continue to need a better understanding of cross-cultural issues and their effects on consumer decision-making styles.