Study On Consumer Decision-Making Styles Of College Students: Based On Lifestyles

From the perspective of lifestyle, this empirical study, taking college students as the research object, aims to explore their Consumer Decision-Making Styles and Lifestyles in the context of Chinese culture, and to discuss the relationship between them. After empirical analysis, it comes to some conclusions and suggestions which help enterprises make market segmentation and positioning more reasonably, develop marketing strategies more effectively.Firstly, by using Consumer Style Inventory (CSI), the paper explores the Decision-Making Styles during purchasing with samples getting from college students in Tianjin.7 Consumer Decision-Making Styles are identified through factor analysis. Respectively, they are perfectionist style, recreation conscious style, fashion conscious style, price sensitive style, impulse- buying style, high-quality conscious style, and brand-oriented style.Meanwhile, empirical analysis based on AIO inventory demonstrates the existence of 8 types of Lifestyles among college students in Tianjin, that is aspiration for success, pursuit of change and innovation, acting independently, social confidence, consuming cautiously, family belonging, advocating western fashion trend, and self-control.Secondly, the paper applies Pearson correlation and stepwise multiple regression analysis to explore the relationship between Consumer Decision-Making Styles and Lifestyles. It turns out that, with exclusive of the influence of demographic variables, the 8 Lifestyles significantly affect consumers' Decision-Making Styles. Among all the 56 couples of relationship, there are 13 significant couples. Consequently, the first hypothesis has been firmly supported.Thirdly, by cluster analysis, college students are divided into 4 groups according to the Consumer Decision-Making Styles:fashion-favored consumers, recreation-oriented consumers, quality-emphasized consumers and money-saved consumers. These 4 groups appear remarkable differences in 4 types of lifestyles. Therefore, the second hypothesis has been proved.Finally, based on findings of the empirical analysis, the paper provides several marketing suggestions from 3 aspects, such as the relationship between Consumer Decision-Making Styles and Lifestyles, characteristics of different consumer groups, and their differences at lifestyles.