MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY *********** TRƯƠNG THANH THẢO DECISION-MAKING STYLES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH CHOICE CRITERIA TOWARDS FASHION CLOTHES PURCHASE A STUDY OF HO CHI MINH CITY CONSUMERS ECONOMICS MASTER THESIS HO CHI MINH CITY – 2010 2 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY *********** TRƯƠNG THANH THẢO DECISION-MAKING STYLES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH CHOICE CRITERIA TOWARDS FASHION CLOTHES PURCHASE A STUDY OF HO CHI MINH CITY CONSUMERS ECONOMICS MASTER THESIS Major: Business Administration Major code: 60.05 Academic Supervisor: Dr. Trần Hà Minh Quân Ho Chi Minh City - 2010 3 Acknowledgement ******** I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and deepest appreciation to my academic research supervisor, Dr. Tran Ha Minh Quan for his precious guidance, share of experiences, ceaseless encouragements and highly valuable suggestions during the research. I would also like to express my appreciation to Professor Nguyen Dong Phong and UEH Board of Directors for creating MBA program in English.
In addition, I would like to thank all the teachers in the Economics University, Ho Chi Minh City, especially faculty of Business Administration and Postgraduate Faculty, who have taught me a lot about marketing and management knowledge in the past three years, for their suggestions and supports for this research. I also would like to express my gratitude to my classmates in MBA classes, Batch 16, especially Mr. Phuc (Faculty of Business Administration), all my friends in Batch 18, 19 for their share of knowledge, experience and their enthusiastic support in conducting survey for this research. I would like to express my sincere thanks to my dearest friends for squeezing lots of time for helping me in conducting survey, share of knowledge and information for this research.
Finally yet importantly, I would like to thank my family members who always gave me supports and encouraged me when I had difficulties in doing the research. Trương Thanh Thảo 4 ABSTRACT ******* This research explores the decision-making styles of consumers in Ho Chi Minh City, tests the differences in these styles among gender, age, monthly income groups. Specifically, it offers empirical results on the relationship between consumer decision-making styles and choice criteria towards fashion clothes purchase. The Consumer Style Inventory (CSI), developed by Sproles and Kendall (1986) for examining different consumer decision-making styles, is adapted in this research.
A survey by questionnaire is employed as the tool to collect primary data and the research instrument is administered to 490 young consumers in Ho Chi Minh City, 410 are identified to be valid for the research. The research results find that eight factors representing the decision-making styles regarding fashion clothes purchase of Ho Chi Minh City consumers are “Brand and “Price equals Quality” consciousness”, “Fashion and Novelty consciousness”, “Perfection and High Quality consciousness”, “Impulsiveness and Carelessness”, “Confusion by Overchoice”, ‘Habit and Brand Loyalty”, “Price and “Value for Money” consciousness” and “Recreational and Hedonic consciousness”. Five factors representing clothes choice criteria including “product and quality related criteria”, “store and salesperson related criteria”, “style and design related criteria”, “brand and image related criteria” and “price related criteria” are found to positively or negatively correlate with 6 decision-making styles such as “Brand and “Price equals Quality” consciousness”, “Fashion and Novelty consciousness”, “Perfection and High Quality consciousness”, “Habit and Brand Loyalty”, “Price and “Value for Money” consciousness and “Recreational and Hedonic consciousness”. The testing results show that there are differences in Ho Chi Minh City consumer decision-making styles among gender, age, monthly income groups.
Keywords: decision-making style, consumer style inventory, fashion clothes. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ********** Acknowledgement. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS. v LIST OF FIGURES.
vi LIST OF TABLES. vii Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION. Scope of the research. Research method and process.
Theoretical and practical implications of the research. Structure of the research. 9 Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Consumer decision – making styles.
Clothes choice criteria. Some main characteristics of fashion clothes market and consumers in Ho Chi Minh City. The research model. 22 Chapter 3: RESEARCH DESIGN.
Stages in the preliminary research. The preliminary research outcome. Data analysis method. 31 6 Chapter 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS.
Characteristics of sample. Descriptions of sample. Characteristics of sample. Descriptive statistics for variables of decision-making styles.
Descriptive statistics for variables of clothes choice criteria. Exploratory factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis for decision-making styles. Exploratory factor analysis for clothes choice criteria.
Scales reliability analysis. Scales reliability analysis for decision-making styles. Scales reliability analysis for clothes choice criteria. Testing the differences in decision-making styles among gender, age, monthly income groups.
Testing the differences in decision-making styles among gender groups. Testing the differences in decision-making styles among age groups. Testing the differences in decision-making styles among income groups. Multiple regression analysis.
Multiple regression analysis. 67 Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the research. Implications of the research.
Limitations and recommendations for further research. 78 References Appendix 1 – Questions for “face to face” discussion. 2 Appendix 3 – Sample characteristics. 5 Appendix 4 – Exploratory Factor Analysis Results.
7 Appendix 5 – Scale Reliability Analysis Results. 14 Appendix 6 – t-test and ANOVA test results. 19 Appendix 7 – Multiple regression analysis results. 32 Appendix 8 – Graphs for testing linear regression hypothesis.
7 ABBREVIATIONS ******** CSI: Consumer Style Inventory EFA: exploratory factor analysis HCMC : Ho Chi Minh City m: million VND: Viet Nam Dong WTO: World Trade Organization 8 LIST OF FIGURES ******** Figure 1. The research process. Structure of the research. The research model.
Stages in preliminary research. The result of research model. 67 9 LIST OF TABLES ******** Table 2.1: Summary of findings from 21 studies of clothes choice criteria.2: 40 items of Consumer Style Inventory .1: Variables for measuring decision-making styles.2: Variables for measuring clothes choice criteria .1: Characteristics of sample .2: Descriptive statistics for variables of decision-making styles .3: Descriptive statistics for variables of clothes choice criteria .4 – Rotated component matrix of decision – making styles .5 – Rotated component matrix of clothes choice criteria .6 – Scale reliability of decision-making styles .7 – Scale reliability of clothes choice criteria. Coefficients in multiple regression analysis of Brand style.
Coefficients in multiple regression analysis of Fashion style. Coefficients in multiple regression analysis of Quality style. Coefficients in multiple regression analysis of Habit style. Coefficients in multiple regression analysis of Price style.
Coefficients in multiple regression analysis of Recreation style. Summary of multiple regression analysis .***………………… 10 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents general introduction of the current research with which the research introduction, research rationale, research objectives are provided. An introduction to the research method to be used, research process and scope of the research are also addressed in this chapter. At the end of the chapter, the implication and structure of the research are provided.
RESEARCH INTRODUCTION After Vietnam’ entrance into World Trade Organization (WTO), Vietnam fashion clothes market in general and Ho Chi Minh City clothes market in particular have developed more strongly. A lot of foreign brands and retailers have come into local market and expanded their businesses such as Gucci, Lacoste, Thump, Tommy, Guess, Calvin Klein, Bossini, John Herry, Nike, Valentino, Esprit, Giordano, Kappa … Moreover, there are more and more department stores, trade and shopping centers, specialty stores…selling a wide range of fashion clothes products, especially foreign brands in more professional way of selling such as Diamond Plaza, Parkson Plaza, Jen Plaza, Sai Gon Center, Saigon Paragon, Vincom center…These are places selling many foreign and local brands with diversified and fashionable styles and designs, high quality and with different prices. These have attracted the attention and interest of consumers and open up abundant choices for them…The increase in number of foreign brands and retailers as well as their sales promotion programs and events have contributed to create the dynamic and tenser competition in the market. Regarding Ho Chi Minh City consumers, when their income increases, their requirements for fashion clothes are also stricter in terms of product quality, brand name, style as well as fashionableness,.Consumers are provided with more choices from local to foreign famous brands.
They are also provided with more product information in magazines, on advertisements, on television and especially on the internet,.These have contributed to make their buying decision-making more complex. In addition, local fashion clothes companies face more challenges as they have to compete with more and more foreign strong brands. The question is raised about how local clothes companies can strengthen their firm position in the market, maintain and expand market share, keep trust and loyalty of consumers. 12 According to George E.Belch1, before a marketing campaign, it is very important that businesses have to know about their target consumers, particularly what their needs are, how they think and decide when buying different products.
Purchase decision – making is one of the most important issues of research on consumer behavior as it relates directly to the product sales. Also according to Hafstrom, Chae and Chung (1992), decision-making is more complex and even more important for consumers today than in the past. Consumers are besieged by advertisements, news articles, and direct mailings that provide an abundance of information. In addition, increases in the number and variety of goods, stores, and shopping centers and online purchasing capabilities have broadened the sphere for consumers’ choice and have complicated their decision-making.
In front of tenser competition in the market, clothes companies and marketers need to know more about consumer buying behaviour, especially decision-making behaviour as well as their critical choice criteria in clothes buying. Having a deep and comprehensive understanding about target consumers will assist them to compete more efficiently and successfully in the market. RESEARCH RATIONALE o In view of keener competition in the future clothes market in Vietnam and especially in Ho Chi Minh City, it is very important that clothes companies, marketers,…need to have a deeper and more comprehensive understanding about consumer buying behaviour, especially consumer buying decision-making but researches on this issue in Vietnam are still limited. After studying many different theories on consumer decision-making, this research will employ the widely used US- based scale, Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) developed by Sproles and Kendall in 1986 to identify Ho Chi Minh City consumer decision-making styles 1 (Advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communication perspective, E.Belch, 1997) 13 towards fashion clothes purchase.
The use of Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) for identifying consumer decision – making styles in fashion clothes industry has been made in previous researches in some countries. o Research into choice criteria also helps marketers understand more about consumer buying decision-making. According to Sproles (1979), different criteria may have varied importance in every consumer’s mind and consumers would assign high importance on the criteria that can really reflect their underlying characteristics and experiences. Besides, the critical characteristics or attributes of clothes products can always determine its ultimate purchase acceptance or rejection by consumers, the criteria that consumers use in clothes purchase decisions are often postulated by researchers as important factors to be considered in the investigation of consumers’ clothes buying behaviour.
o In Wickliffe’s (1998) study, the author concluded that consumer decision- making styles have been found to be highly correlated with some product characteristics (e. price, country of origin, brand name,…).F (2004) study on the relationship between decision-making styles and clothes choice criteria in China, they also found that the consumer decision-making styles have relationship with clothes choice criteria. o Based on previous researches and in order to understand more about consumer buying behaviour, this research also investigates the relationship between decision- making styles and clothes choice criteria.