Decision-making styles of individualist and collectivist automobile consumers in Australia

This study investigates the relationship between individualism-collectivism and consumer decision-making styles applied to the purchase of automobiles. An adapted version of the widely used Consumer Styles Inventory (Sproles and Kendall, 1986) was used to measure consumer decision-making styles. Based on a sample of 202 respondents from Australian individualist and collectivist backgrounds, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted on Sproles and Kendall’s (1986) CSI adapted for high involvement purchases. Mean differences between the two cultural backgrounds were assessed via MANCOVA. Results indicated that individualists and collectivists significantly differed on ‘brand conscious’ and ‘confused by overchoice’ decision making styles, with collectivists scoring significantly higher. There were no differences in the perfectionist, high quality conscious; price conscious and habitual/brand loyal decision-making styles. The paper also discusses how automobile companies could develop suitable marketing strategies for individualist and collectivist consumers in Australia.