A comparative examination of consumer decision styles in Austria

Abstract

Mental orientations characterising a consumer's approach to making choices – in short, consumer decision styles – have attracted considerable interest from researchers and practitioners for their value in predicting purchasing behaviour. As a result, they play a key role for marketing activities such as market segmentation, positioning, and tailoring marketing strategies. To contribute to an internationally valid and reliable research instrument, this paper tests a well-documented and accepted research instrument, the Consumer Styles Inventory in another country context and, for the first time, with a sample (n = 225) representative of the general population. Results indicate that some dimensions seem to be universal, while national idiosyncrasies emerged as well.