Personality Dimensions and Decision Making: Exploring Consumers' Shopping Styles

Abstract

Studying impact of personality on various aspects of behavior is interest of researchers from past some decades (Whelan & Davies, 2006). Although personality traits and consumers' decision making styles are some of the frequently studied facets of consumers'behavior in the West (Shiv & Fedorikhin, 1999) and the process in which consumers make their purchase decisions has long been of great interest to entrepreneurs and researchers (Burnett & Lundford, 1994) yetto extent of our knowledge literature is silence in presenting significant research work addressing the issue in developing countries (Khan & Farhat, 2012). Keeping in view the relatively higher potential of growth in developing countries, it is need of the time to investigate issues facilitating development of small and medium level business. The present study is designed to explore the relation between various personality traits and consumers' decision making styles in a developing country (i.e., Pakistan). The study extends the literature in determination of the level to which personality traits may have a role in consumers' decisions making and to investigate factors that may sway the role of personality in decision making in developing economies (Correia, Kozak, & Ferradeira, 2011).Existing empirical research suggested that consumers generally enter the market with a variety of decision-making styles that influence purchase decisions (Sproles & Kendall, 1986). Sproles and Kendall (1986) defined eight categories of decision-making styles: perfectionism consciousness, consciousness, novelty and fashion consciousness, recreational and hedonistic shopping consciousness, price and value consciousness, impulsive and careless consumer, confused by over choice consumer and habitual and brand loyal consumer. Most of the studies addressed personality as a phenomenon which affects a lot of other aspects of human behavior in various contexts (eg., Cleff, Dorr, Vicknair, & Walter, 2013). For instance, behavior researchers found that individuals' personality has a role in brand preference as well as product choice in consumers' decision making process (Aaker, 1997). On the other hand sales persons' personality largely affects consumers' perceived service quality and decisions making abilities (Teng, Huang, & Tsai, 2007). Pervious findings provide relevant insight about the relationship between personality and decision making behaviors (Cankurt, Thomas, Gunden, & Miran, 2013). Personality traits may affect a behavior according to strengths and weaknesses of his/her personality to proceed in decision making process (Burnett & Lundford, 1994). In the present study, we aimed to elaborate the complex interplay of relationship between personality traits and consumers' decision making styles by investigating moderating role of various demographic characteristics in a sample of actual buyers (indulge in earning and spending) from local markets.Literature also suggests that the neuroticism trait strongly correlates with negative affect and that extraversion traits correlate strongly with positive affect (Costa & McCrae, 1980). For instance, high neuroticism consumers may need help with stress management because high on neuroticism represent individual tendency to experience distress, nervousness, tension, depression, guilt, low self-esteem, poor control of impulses and somatic complaints (McCrae & John, 1992), before and after purchase even with relatively high education. On the other hand, low consciousness consumers with low education have issues in maintaining interest and positively interact with others during purchase process. Cabrera (2006) reported that three dimensions of the Big Five personality model, agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness are positively related to knowledge sharing intentions in purchase and consumption processes of decision making styles. …

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