Fashion Consumers’ Purchase Decision-Making Styles Related to the Enneagram Core Values and Self-Construal Levels

Abstract

This study investigated a conceptual framework of fashion consumers` purchase decision-making styles related to behavioral typology of personality. In response to critiques on fragmented and varied use of personality measurements, this study selectively tested and verified an alternative typological model of Enneagram value systems and self-construal levels that could explain the fashion consumers` typological propensities in purchase decision-making. One hundred-item measurement scale for the fashion consumers` purchase decision-making styles was developed based on the extensive literature. Three groups of fashion major students, a total of 107 participants, who respectively participated in 2-hour-long Enneagrams seminars from spring 2013 to fall 2014, were asked to re-sentence the question items to clearly reflect their Enneagram personality to make purchase decisions. Participants described their propensities in their own words about the most comfortable state during the 5-step processes of the purchase decision making process. The revised scale was distributed to 423 participants in January 2016, and the results verified the group differences in various styles in the process of purchase decision-making corresponding to the typological variables discussed in Enneagram. The correlation between Enneagram core values embodied by fashion consumers during the stages of purchase decision-making in extensive levels of self-construal were verified in the context of their fashion decision making. This study found the possibility of the typological approach toward Enneagram types of personality to be applicable to explain and predict peculiar facets of fashion consumers` purchase decision-making styles.