Customers’ repurchase decision in the culinary industry: Do the Big-Five personality types matter?

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the Big-Five (5) personality types on customers’ purchase decisions, as it is regarded within the phenomenon of customers’ experienced meaning, which would shape how a person’s personality would define their meaning of perceptions toward an experience in repurchasing decisions. A qualitative study with semi-structured interviews was employed in order to answer the research objectives by interviewing 84 customers in cafe and restaurants in Makassar city. In this paper it was discovered that participants whose high level of personality traits such as Openness, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are the ones who will tend to make repurchase decision in the culinary industry. Moreover, those with low level in dimension of Neuroticism show a substantial relationship in making repurchase decision toward service/goods in culinary industry merely for identity making, particularly their social status in social media. Based on the research findings, there are several factors (themes) identified in exploring the relationship between the big-five personality types (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience) and repurchase decision in the culinary context. These are: 1) word of mouth and social status; and 2) price. This paper offers original contributions as this paper acknowledges the importance of a qualitative study in exploring the relationship between personality types and customers repurchase decision.