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ABSTRACT
This article explores the effects of two cultural dimensions, face consciousness and risk aversion, on consumers' decision-making styles. Data from China and the United States show that consumers in the United States differ from their counterparts in China in decision-making styles. Face consciousness and risk aversion appear to contribute to such divergence. Implications for future research are discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
As the consumer market becomes increasingly globalized, research on consumer decision-making styles in various markets is gaining increasing attention. Evidence shows that decision-making styles vary across nations (e.g., Durvasula, Lysonski, &Andrews, 1993; Fan &Xiao, 1998). Such cross-national variations could be the result of economic, social, and/or cultural differences. Under cultural differences however, the roles of two factors, face consciousness and risk aversion, have remained relatively unexplored in the context of consumer decision making in the global arena. This exploratory study attempts to fill this gap in the literature.
CONSUMER DECISION-MAKING STYLES
Consumer decision-making styles are mental orientations that characterize a consumer's approach to making consumption choices (Sproles &Kendall, 1986). Based on a review of the consumer literature, Sproles and Kendall identified eight fundamental characteristics reflecting consumer decision-making styles, including (a) perfectionistic and highly quality-conscious orientation; (b) brand-conscious and price-equalsquality orientation; (c) novelty and fashion-conscious orientation; (d) recreational and hedonistic orientation; (e) price-conscious and valuefor-money orientation; (f) impulsive and careless orientation; (g) confused by overchoice orientation; and (h) habitual and brand-loyal orientation. They further developed and tested a consumer-styles inventory (CSI) that could be used in measuring consumer decisionmaking styles. This literally opened a new direction in consumer decision-making research. It is believed that recognizing characteristics of decision-making styles would aid in consumer education on desirable consumption behavior and family counseling on financial management. Later, with the use of a consumer socialization perspective, Shim (1996) found that both socialization agents (e.g., family, peers) and social structural factors (e.g., gender, ethnicity) have great influence on adolescents' decision-making styles.
When developing and testing the CSI, Sproles and Kendall (1986) used high school students as their sample. With the limitation of this special consumer group, the authors called for research to test the generalizability of the instrument with different populations and in different contexts. Toward this end, several researchers have tried to assess the...