THE ROLE OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN DETERMINING THE STYLE OF CONSUMER DECISION-MAKING

Abstract

Different methods and approaches have been developed to understand consumers’ decision-making styles. One of these is the Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) (Sproles and Kendall, 1986). In this research, consumers’ decision-making styles are analyzed with the CSI approach. The CSI deals with the mental orientation of consumers in making decisions and, therefore, focuses on the cognitive and effective orientations in consumer decision-making and identifies eight mental characteristics of consumer decision-making. How gender affects consumers’ decision-making styles is analyzed in this study. Males and females living in Erzurum, Turkey, constitute the population of the study. According to the results, male and female consumers have different decision-making styles.