Risk-taking propensity in supplier choice: Differences by sex and decision frame in a simulated organizational buying context

Abstract

Past research concerning decision framing has found that buyer's choices tend to be risk averse for decisions framed as a gain and risk seeking for choices framed as a loss. Attribution theory suggests that women may be less likely to take risk than men when faced with similar decision-making problems. The present study sought to determine whether there would be differences between men and women with respect to their supplier choices based on how the purchasing decision was framed. Two experiments were conducted: one using a price-based purchasing scenario and the other using a price-based and a quality-based purchasing scenario. For the price-based scenario women tended to make more risky supplier choices than men when the purchasing decision was framed as a loss, and less risky supplier choices than men when the purchasing decision was framed as a gain. No differences between the sexes were found for the quality-based scenario. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.