UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Dinh Thi To Nhu FACTORS AFFECTING COUPLE’S DECISION MAKING IN CONTEMPORARY WEDDING EVENT DECORATION: FAMILY INFLUENCE, SOCIAL STATUS, AND PERSONAL VALUES MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Dinh Thi To Nhu FACTORS AFFECTING COUPLE’S DECISION MAKING IN CONTEMPORARY WEDDING EVENT DECORATION: FAMILY INFLUENCE, SOCIAL STATUS, AND PERSONAL VALUES ID: 22110040 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR: Dr. VO THI NGOC THUY Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com i Tables of Content Chapter 1: Introduction .3 Scope of the study and methodology. 5 Chapter 2: Literature review .1 Concept of contemporary wedding and wedding event decoration .2 Wedding event decoration .2 Definition of Consumer behavior and theories of factors affecting consumer purchasing decision .3 Previous researches about factors affecting couple’s decision making and identifying hypotheses in this study. 16 Chapter 3: Research Methodology .4 Quatitative pilot research and results.
25 Chapter 4: Data Analysis .1 Descriptive statistic of sample .2 Adjustment of hypotheses and research model. 37 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 Testing of normal distribution. 42 Chapter 5: General conclusion .1 Contributions of research .2 Limitations and further researches. 49 References Appendix LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii List of Figures and Charts Figure 2.1 Conceptual model: Factors affecting couple’s decision making in contemporary wedding event decoration: Family influence, social status and personal values .1: Adjustment model of the research.
21 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv List of Tables Table 2.1 Theories of factors affecting consumer purchasing decision .2 Variables and previous researches .1 Cronbach alpha result of pilot test .2 KMO and Bartlett's Test result of pilot test .3 Pattern Matrix result of pilot test .1 Demographic statistics result .2 Cronbach’s Alpha result of all variables .3 KMO and Bartlett's Test result of independent variables .4 Pattern Matrix of items .5 KMO and Bartlett's Test result of Dependent variable .6: Pearson Correlation Coefficient result .7 Regression Analysis and Anova’s test Result. 44 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Abstract Many recent years, Vietnamese young couples tend to organize their wedding event including many items of decoration such as photo booth, gallery table, aisle décor, stage backdrop, guest tables’ decoration and lighting system. This absolutely generate more expense for their wedding; however they still determine to use the service. So, what factors really affect consumption in wedding reception decoration? The aim of this thesis is to investigate and identify the real impacts on couple’s decision making in contemporary wedding event decoration, and to provide practical contributions for all suppliers of this field in Ho Chi Minh City for the next years.
This study was conducted in from September 2013 to April 2014 in inner areas of the city. 135 couples who have just married within three years that used wedding event decoration served as subjects in a study designed to investigate. All responses of the questionnaires were made on a 5-point Likert scale with the five elements that required investigating, including family relations, wife/husband attitudes, social status, conformity and the need of uniqueness. The results reveal that social status is the most important impact on the decision making of couples to use the wedding event decoration.
In addition, the communication of family members with couples makes a strong effect on their final decision. Factors of conformity, the need of uniqueness and wife/husband attitudes also effect on couple’s decision making. Keywords: couple’s decision making, family relations, husband/wife attitudes, social status, conformity, need of uniqueness, wedding event decoration, Ho Chi Minh City LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter is a beginning of the thesis that includes five sections. The research background is firstly presented.
Then, the research objectives of the thesis are discussed. The chapter also introduces the contribution and scope of the study. Finally, the research structure is presented.1 Research background Gidoni (2000) states that a contemporary Japanese wedding consists of traditional customs and Western-style ceremony because of economic motivations. Similarly, a contemporary Vietnamese wedding combine the two parts.
After wearing traditional outfits to join in a traditional wedding ceremony with a list of rituals, bride and groom are ready to change their custom to Western style ones to celebrate their wedding event with their friends, colleagues and relatives in a public institution. In this event, many items of a Western-style wedding can be applied such as white wedding gown, wedding cake, champagne fountain, dancing performance (Nguyen & Belk, 2012) and decoration. Because of generating many things for a wedding event, budget for a contemporary wedding is certainly higher than in the past. According to a report of Home Credit group, an average of wedding budget of a couple is around VND100 million for 300 guests (Le, 2013).
Wedding industry is more attractive for investors such as wedding event and convention, photography, wedding dress and make up, and decoration. A report of Doanh Nhan Sai Gon (2013) provides information of VND ten thousand billion of profit in wedding event and convention field, an increase of 15% compared to the last year. More and more wedding dress stores and studios have opened with many updated-Western styles in their showrooms. Particularly, in ten LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 recent years, wedding decoration field have developed very fast with many big suppliers like Vietnam Wedding Planner, Bliss, Confetti, V-Party, Hajime, Marry Me, Lemon Tree, Cleo, and so on.
Most of the decoration styles currently tend to follow Western wedding concept from photo booth, gallery table to the stage backdrop with many candles, fresh flowers, glasses and crystals. A couple easily search on the Internet through Google or Bing to find out the common style of wedding event decoration and choose one supplier to make it on their wedding day. Couples recently express their interesting on decoration in wedding event in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) for a more pleasure and memorable wedding, as the author observed through the Internet, online newspapers and social media and the real experience of communications between the author and friends who have just married. However, wedding event decoration surely generates an amount of budget that leads to find hard for them to determine to consume the service.
The number can increase to 10% of intend budget for a wedding (Le, 2013). So, what factors really affect consumption in wedding event decoration? A recent research of Nguyen & Belk (2012) mentions about the changes of wedding consumption in Vietnam after Doi Moi from some aspects such as social values, social relations, and gender roles. Especially, in the research, they state that filial piety is still one of the most important fundamental values of Vietnamese kinship. That can affect wedding consumption because couples respect opinions of their elder members in the family.
In addition, as a study of Cotte and Wood (2004), “family socialization is a rich field in consumer behavior” (p. The research of Nguyen & Belk (2012) also points out the social status element in wedding consumption when young couples include Western wedding concept into their weddings to show the social status or family status by spending some luxury services. Another research shows that couples LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 focus on their wedding as a performance day of their status, society level or the wealth instead of happiness of the day they can share their lives together (Adrian, 2003). According to the research of Nguyen & Belk (2012), values also make an effect on wedding consumption because of the importance and unique of a wedding as Vietnamese rituals.
Clawson and Vinson (1977) suggest that personal value is considered as one of the strongest impacts on consumer behavior. Particularly, Partner (2001) states about a vital role of lifestyle in a special event such as weddings. These results of researches which were conducted in many countries as well as in Vietnam found out factors affecting to consumer decision making in general. Many weddings recently have been included decoration that opens opportunities for event decoration suppliers to provide many services in Ho Chi Minh City.
This study raises research objectives about exploring the real factors affecting on final decision making of couples that can create more suitable services to save time of consultancy and persuasion to improve competitive advantage in market.2 Research objectives Because consumer behavior is a rich field that need to be explored, many researches were conducted to find out the factors that affecting consumer behavior decision making. These researches help managers, businesses can understand thoroughly about the customer insight and offer the best products and services for them. Thus, based on the literature review of consumer behavior and affecting of some factors, and especially in the context of wedding event decoration in Ho Chi Minh city, the study aims: To propose a model that predicting some factors affecting wedding event decoration in Ho Chi Minh city LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 To explore the real impacts on couple’s decision making in contemporary wedding event decoration To evaluate how each factor affects to couple’s decision making The author would like to provide the findings for wedding decoration suppliers in Ho Chi Minh City to understand more about their customers and the problems in the competitive market, then constantly design a suitable service for couples to save time and expense.3 Scope of the study and methodology The data collecting will be divided into two parts including pilot test and main test. The pilot test is conducted with 20 respondents to pre-test how they understand the variables and questionnaire.
The main test is then conducted with 135 respondents. This research will be conducted in inner areas of Ho Chi Minh City, included District 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, Tan Binh, Phu Nhuan, Go Vap, and Binh Thanh. The interviewees will be couples that have just married within three years that used wedding event decoration. The purpose of the research is to examine the conceptual model.
The measurement scales are estimated using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to test the reliability and validity. The multiple regressions in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16 would be conducted to evaluate correlation between dependent and independent variables.4 Research contribution The research is intended to contribute twofold contribution including theoretical contributions and managerial implications. The research is expected to reach new LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 aspects of influent factors on consumption of wedding event decoration based on the previous researches and provide some managerial implications for businesses in this field in Ho Chi Minh City. First, the research will apply the knowledge of Kotler and Armstrong (2011) of factors affecting consumer purchasing decision to new product, a wedding event decoration by performing family influence, social status and personal values and how much they affecting.
Although many international researchers expressed their interests in these factors affecting on wedding consumption; however, they have not examined thoroughly the effects of three factors that mentioned above to couple’s decision making on wedding event decoration. In Vietnam several researches also were conducted with social status, social relations and gender roles factors (Nguyen & Belk, 2012) to analyze their impacts on wedding consumption. Therefore, this study has been quite new to contribute the way of measuring factors affecting to using wedding event decoration in Vietnam, particularly in Ho Chi Minh city, especially examine deeply about influence of family influence and social status on couple’s decision, and explore new aspect of personal values that adopted by from global researches. Second, the research can help wedding event decoration companies understanding about real factors can affect directly to final decision of couples.