The objective of this study is to identify the different factors that impact on consumer behavior on the bases of decision making style. The sample size of this study was two hundred and fifty. Data was collected through five point Likert scale questionnaire. SPSS was used to analyze the data. Correlation and multiple regression was performed to measure the relationship between independent and dependent variables and independent sample t-test was applied to test difference between male and female decision making style. This study concludes that there is significant relationship between male and female decision making style and female respondents are more agreed that decision making styles influence the consumer behavior. All the independent variables have significant and positive relationship with consumer behavior

Hunjra, Ahmed Imran

Khan, Hashim

Niazi, Ghulam Shabbir Khan

English

Munich Personal RePEc Archive

Munich Personal RePEc Archive
Relationship between decision making
styles and consumer behavior
Hunjra, Ahmed Imran and Niazi, Ghulam Shabbir Khan and
Khan, Hashim
UIMS-PMAS- University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi, Pakistan,
Quaid e Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan., Iqra University
Islamabad Campus, Pakistan
2011
Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/40676/
MPRA Paper No. 40676, posted 15 Aug 2012 13:52 UTC
Ahmed Imran Hunjra1, Ghulam Shabbir Khan Niazi2, Hashim Khan3
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DECISION MAKING
STYLES AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
The objective of this study is to identify different factors that impact consumer behavior on the
basis of a decision making style. The sample size of this study was 250 questionnaires. The data were
collected through a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire. SPSS was used to analyze the data.
Correlation and multiple regression were performed to measure the relationship between inde-
pendent and dependent variables; independent sample t-test was applied to test the difference
between male and female decision making styles. This study concludes there is a significant rela-
tionship between male and female decision making style and female respondents are more likely to
assert that decision making styles influence consumer behavior. All the independent variables have
significant positive relationship with consumer behavior.
Keywords: decision making style; consumer behavior; significant relationship; perfectionism;
fashion.
Introduction. The decision making process is directly associated with the needs,
wants, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of a consumer under the problem solving.
Consumer decision making styles depend on age, gender, income, lifestyle, percep-
tion, personality, psychographic and geographic characterstics (Williams, 1990). A
behavior is defined as a combination of complex activities and procedures together
with the actions, which govern the decisions of an individual. External factors like
environment, interactions, ambience, etc. also impact behavior (Lee, 1983).
Decision making styles are essential to determine consumer behavior and are rela-
tively constant over time and thus are significant for market segmentation.
Understanding the buying decision making behavior of consumers is important for
companies' strategic marketing activities. 
Decision making is accurate in broad-based gender differences but can not be
true in specific cases. It should be also noted that men and women apply different
shopping strategy, act differently in negotiations and relationships. Internalized mar-
ket relations and gender roles are influenced by customs, though limited in number
and location. The research proves that gender affects purchasing behavior. Gender
difference in visualization is also known in retail anthropology. The most important
aspect is time. The purchase decision is affected by many things: whether people are
urgently needed or how products and services will meet the requirements now and in
the near future. 
Women generally make purchase decisions based mostly on emotions, while
men go more with facts and data. Women prefer a description, a story with faces and
interaction and the relationships that are occurring increases the effect. The female
mind seems to be more multitracked and networked compared to male thinking
which is a lot more compartmentalized.
The purpose of this study is to identify different factors that impact consumer
behavior on the basis of a decision making style, as well as to evaluate the consumer's
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS 21
© Ahmed Imran Hunjra, Ghulam Shabbir Khan Niazi, Hashim Khan, 2012
1
corresponding author, Lecturer, UIMS PMAS-University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi; PhD Scholar, Iqra Universi-
ty, Islamabad, Pakistan. 
2
Assistant Professor, Quaid-i-Azam School of Management Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
3
MS Scholar, Iqra University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
perception regarding different factors impacting consumer behavior: brand con-
sciousness, perfectionism, variety seeking, novelty-fashion and product quality con-
sciousness. 
Literature review. Mental and cognitive orientation continues to dominate the
concumer's choice in consumer decision making styles to purchase and procurement.
Basic idea is that the customers' understanding, brand conscious, quality conscious,
brand loyal and impulsive shopping (Sproles, 1985), including basic decision-making
procedures are involved in procurement. Consumer decision-making process is a
complex phenomenon. There is a large number of factors affecting every decision to
purchase goods or services. Consumer decision-making (CDM) is a mental direction
to characterize the users' option to choose. Defined broadly, there are 3 types of
approaches in the study on consumer decision making styles, i.e. lifestyle approach,
the consumer typology approach and the consumer characteristics approach (Sproles
and Kendall, 1986). Consumer decision making style is psychological orientation
about a user's preferences by means of decision making. Although consumer decision
making behavior is focused on the specific pattern of cognitive and affective respons-
es (Bennett and Kassarjian, 1972), national culture and attitudes (Hofstede, 1980)
established the highlighting effect.
It also comes up with the attributes of expectations and opinions. A belief can
also be defined as a mental idea or an image that influences opinions, perceptions,
interactions and emotions of an individual (Shohov, 2002). Attitude refers to a men-
tal state or perception of an individual that influences and makes an impact on life sit-
uations of that individual. In attitude personal characteristics of a person really count
and person thinks independently without the involvement of rational thinking. It has
often been observed that people tend to make a specific attitude blindly despite the
very strong evidence exists against it (Corman and Guy, 1966). While defining the
attitude a person is already having a particular opinion or that individual is predis-
posed, because of which he/she acts in a specific and unique way. Therefore, foresight
and psyche play a major role in the mind of that individual (Holden, 2007).
A great number of people shop in the Internet (there were more than 600 mln.
of them two years ago). However, the recent figures show that number of people shop-
ping in the Internet has grown to about nearly 900 mln. Therefore, there is a 40%
increase in terms of the Internet shoppers as well as there is an increase in the e-com-
merce transactions and online revenues too (Jacques, 2008). Online advertising also
increased as well as the web usage, and developed a new decision making style. This
can be estimated by the fact that in the UK only last year the online advertising
spending was about more than 3 bln. Euro. They also evaluated that online advertis-
ing grew to about 16% as compared with the precious year. Usually advertisements
related to cinemas and movies were the most to be spent by advertisers (Sweney and
Wray, 2008). Many marketers around the world moved towards the web advertise-
ments for their products and services. Websites allow advertisements to be more dis-
tinctive, more customized and more personalized, and have special capabilities like
constant message delivery, easier selection of an audience, global reach and global
exposure of products and services all around the world (E-Marketer, 2001).
The advertiser demand for online video advertising has always been high. The
reason is they are highly targeted and could be very effective, cheaper and more reli-
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS22
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS Vol. 2, #4, 2012
able to reach the target audiences. Video advertisements in the Internet create a big
output for advertisers and therefore could be even more helpful in terms of creating
awareness about goods and services (Denham, 2005). Also it was concluded that
audio and video advertisements online could boost brand awareness as compared to
any other available advertisements online. With the help of such kind of video ads
there was a possibility that message association with the consumer could boost to
14.5%, the brand loyalty to about 5% and the purchase intent to 4.8% (Denham,
2005).
Figure 1. Theoretical Framework
Hypotheses Statements:
H1: Brand consciousness influences the consumer decision making behavior.
H2: Brand perfectionism influences the consumer decision making behavior.
H3: Product quality influences the consumer decision making behavior.
H4: Variety seeking influences the consumer decision making behavior.
H5: Novelty fashion influences the consumer decision making behavior.
Methodology. The sample size of this study was 250. The sample was comprised
males and females in twin cities of Pakistan Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Random
sampling method was used regardless specific preferences and demographic attributes
of the respondents. Data was collected from the primary sources. A questionnaire was
used to collect the data. The instrument was retrieved from the published research
paper (Mokhlis and Salleh, 2009). The questionnaire was measured on the 5-point
Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. SPSS was used to ana-
lyze the data. The casual research method was conducted for this study. Correlation
and regression were performed to measure the relationship between independent and
dependent variables and independent sample t-test was applied to test the difference
between male and female decision making style.
Table 1. Reliability of Measurements (N = 250)
The results in Table 1 demonstrate the reliability of the data, the brand con-
sciousness with reliability of 0.804 and the perfectionism of 0.759, the Cronbach
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS 23
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS Vol. 2, #4, 2012
 
- Brand Consciousness 
- Perfectionism 
- Quality Product 
- Variety Seeking 
- Novelty Fashion 
 
Consumer            
Behavior 
 
IDVs 
Decision Making Styles 
DV 
Variables Items Cronbach alpha 
Brand consciousness 8 0.804 
Perfectionism 5 0.759 
Product Quality 4 0.814 
Variety seeking 3 0.837 
Novelty-fashion 4 0.609 
Total 24 0.908 
 
Alpha for product quality is 0.814, for variety seeking is 0.837, for novelty fashion is
0.609 and the reliability of the whole instrument having 24 items is 0.908.
Results and Discussion. The objective of this research is to determine the factors
that influence the consumer decision making style, so various tests are performed in
this chapter and the results are summarized below (Table 2).
Table 2. Frequency Distribution W R T "Gender and Age"
The result in Table 2 gives the information regarding the gender. Out of total 250
respondents, the participants in this study 149 are male and 101 are female. Table 2
further reveals the information about the respondents' age brackets. Out of 250
respondents 87% were between 20–25 years old, 19 were in between 26–30 years old,
whereas 10 respondents were 31–35 years and only 3 respondents were over 35. So,
almost 90% of respondents were within 20–25 years old.
Table 3. Consumer behavior of male and female respondents
(Independent Sample T-Test) (N = 250)
Independent sample T-test is used to measure the level of response between male
and female respondents regarding the decision making behavior. The results in Table
3 depict there is a significant positive relationship between male and female consumer
behavior (p < 0.05), and F-Statistics is 5.217. The mean value (3.5069) of female
respondents shows that female respondents admitted that decision making styles
influence consumer behavior, which means that female are more conscious as com-
pared to male respondents regarding the decision making style. 
The results of the correlation matrix demonstrate there is a positive significant
correlation between all variables and all independent variables are highly correlated
with consumer behavior with Pearson correlation value of > 0.50. The results further
give the clear picture that at 5% level of significance consumer behavior is highly cor-
related with consciousness with a value of 0.654. Based on these results we can argue
that the decision making styles influence consumer behavior and consumer behavior
is positively and highly correlated with all independent variables that are the con-
structs of the decision making styles. 
The above table gives the information about the regression analysis. The R-
square (0.696) depicts fitness of model and the F-statistics reveals that the model is
significant as p-value is 0.000 at 5% of significant level. The result demonstrates a
positive and significant relationship between decision making style and consumer
behavior. The beta coefficients demonstrate the contribution of each independent
variable. So, novelty fashion and product quality contribute 28% and 24% respective-
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS24
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS Vol. 2, #4, 2012
Gender Frequency Percentage Age Frequency Percentage 
Male 149 59.6 20–25 218 87.2 
Female 101 40.4 26–30 19 7.6 
   31–35 10 4.0 
   > 35 3 1.2 
Total 250 100.0 Total 250 100.0 
Consumer Decision 
Behavior 
Group Mean Std Dev F-Stat P-Value 
Male 3.4273 0.47041 5.217 0.030 
Female 3.5069 0.48656   
 
ly in consumer behavior. All the independent variables have a significant positive rela-
tionship with consumer behavior as p < 0.05. So, based on the results, all the
hypotheses (H1, H2, H3, H4 and H5) are proved positive and significant, i.e. the
consumer decision making style influence the consumer behavior. 
Table 4. Correlations between consumer behavior
and consumer decision making style (N = 250)
Table 5. Multiple regression coefficients, standard errors in parentheses,
t-values in brackets and p-values in italics
Conclusion and recommendation. The study aims to measure the relationship
between decision making style and consumer behavior as well as the importance of
each factor of the decision making style regarding consumer behavior. This study also
checks the difference between male and female respondents' consumer behavior. Out
of total 250 respondents, the participants in this study 149 are male and 101 are
female. Almost 90% of the respondents were 20–25 years old. This study concludes
that there is a significant relationship between male and female decision making style,
and female respondents argue that decision making styles influence consumer behav-
ior, which means that female are more conscious as compared to male respondents
regarding the decision making styles.
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS 25
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS Vol. 2, #4, 2012
  DV IDV1 IDV2 IDV3 IDV4 IDV5 
Consumer 
Behavior 
Pearson Correlation 1      
Sig. (2-tailed)       
N 250      
Consciousness Pearson Correlation .654** 1     
Sig. (2-tailed) .000      
N 250 250     
Perfectionism Pearson Correlation .676** .564** 1    
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000     
N 250 250 250    
Product Quality  Pearson Correlation .715** .558** .624** 1   
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000    
N 250 250 250 250   
Variety seeking  Pearson Correlation .761** .649** .691** .706** 1  
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000   
N 250 250 250 250 250  
Novelty-fashion  Pearson Correlation .731** .585** .647** .632** .682** 1 
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000  
N 250 250 250 250 250 250 
** Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). 
 
Constant 
Conscio-
usness 
Perfecti-
onism 
Product 
Quality 
Variety 
Seeking 
Novelty 
Fashion 
R-Square F-Stat 
0.149 0.177 0.147 0.248 0.117 0.280 0.696 113.11 
(0.140) (0.047) (0.054) (0.051) (0.060) (0.052)   
[1.064] [3.788] [2.701] [4.820] [2.938] [5.387]   
0.288 0.000 0.007 0.000 0.005 0.000  0.000 
The results of the correlation matrix demonstrate a positive significant correla-
tion between all the independent variables with the consumer behavior with a Pearson
correlation value of > 0.50. The decision making styles influence consumer behavior,
and consumer behavior is positively and highly correlated with all independent vari-
ables that are constructs of the decision making styles. It is also found that there is a
positive and significant relationship between decision making style and consumer
behavior. 
This study helps to investigate and evaluate the behavior, attitudes and beliefs of
individuals regarding the decision making styles. By identifying these characteristics
from the consumers' perspective, the advertisers will be able to shape up a more effec-
tive pattern for online advertisement as well as develop possible solutions for improve-
ment. 
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ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS26
ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS Vol. 2, #4, 2012


Relationship between decision making styles and consumer behavior

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Relationship between decision making styles and consumer behavior

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