Article Overview
The reviewed article is a journal publication in the social and behavioral sciences (Tanksale, Neelam & Venkatachalam, 2014). The article is about research conducted in India on consumer decision-making styles among young consumers aged between 18-21 years. According to the researchers of the article, targeting this age group was worthy of the investigation as it comprises one of the major market segments in almost all the economies of the world. The authors were convinced that investigating this age group’s buying behavior and its associated traits would be a major milestone in defining specific marketing strategies that can suit this segment within the Indian context.
The article justifies that the selected group is special, and its traits call for marketers to understand the different ways of developing products tailored to meet the needs of this market segment. The authors assert that this group has a great influence on the buying or shopping behaviors of their families, given the fact that they belong to the generations Y and Z, which are generally viewed as tech-savvy.
The article defines decision-making styles as mental orientations consumers have in making choices when buying goods and services. The styles can be determined using three approaches, namely consumer characteristics, consumer typology, and psychographic approaches, among other dimensions of the US eight-factor model. Based on these dimensions, the research used quantitative analysis based on a sample of 254 students. Specifically, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method was applied as the analysis strategy, using the SPSS version18.0 as the statistical software.
The results from the study did not concur completely with the US eight-factor model. However, the findings confirmed the six styles, namely: recreational shopping consciousness; novelty-fashion consciousness; perfectionistic; brand-conscious, habitual, and confused by over choice. The results further ended up with new consumer behavior, which the authors referred to as shopping avoidance. The study concluded by recommending further research on using other different models to investigate consumer behaviors in different cultural and environmental contexts.
How the Article Relates to Marketing Topics Covered in the Course
The article focused on India as the cultural context. This relates to the ‘place’ element of the 4-P’s of marketing model constituting place, product, price, and promotion (Aydinli, Bertini & Lambrecht, 2014). The article focused on decision-making as the key pillar of the research. Decision-making relates to the topic of consumer behavior, which involves understanding the factors the lead in deciding what to purchase and from whom to buy from (Solomon, 2014). Understanding the decision-making strategy of a specific type of consumer leads to the identification of their tastes and preferences (Atakan, Bagozzi & Yoon, 2014). As such, it can be said that the article relates well to the topics of market targeting and segmentation, which involve ensuring products being marketed are tailored to specific target groups. In summary, the findings of the study relate to the marketing topics of product development and marketing channels.
Significance of the Article’s Subject on Today’s Business Environment
Today’s business environment is characterized by an ever-growing number of youths with increased capability to buy goods and services (Go, Varcoe, Eng, Pho & Choi, 2012). This owes to the fact that many youths between the age of 18 to 21 years, mostly constituting students at universities and colleges, have access to diverse sources of incomes that include student loans and hefty pocket money from their parents. Coupled with peer pressure (Wang, Yu & Wei, 2012), this group can afford some luxury goods and services. Thus, understanding the decision-making process, as covered in the subject of the article, would be important in today’s business environment with reference to this target market.
References
Atakan, S. S., Bagozzi, R. P., & Yoon, C. (2014). Consumer participation in the design and realization stages of production: How self-production shapes consumer evaluations and relationships to products. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 31(4), 395-408.
Aydinli, A., Bertini, M., & Lambrecht, A. (2014). Price promotion for emotional impact. Journal of Marketing, 78(4), 80-96.
Go, C. G., Varcoe, K., Eng, T., Pho, W., & Choi, L. (2012). Money savvy youth: Evaluating the effectiveness of financial education for fourth and fifth graders. San Francisco, CA: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper, 2.
Solomon, M. R. (2014). Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Tanksale, D., Neelam, N., & Venkatachalam, R. (2014). Consumer decision making styles of young adult consumers in India. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 133, 211-218.
Wang, X., Yu, C., & Wei, Y. (2012). Social media peer communication and impacts on purchase intentions: A consumer socialization framework. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(4), 198-208.