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A STUDY ON DECISION MAKING STYLES OF COLLEGE STUDENTS FOR THE APPAREL PRODUCTS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ERODE DISTRICT
Dr. P. VIKKRAMAN Director, School of Management Studies, Anna University of Technology, Coimbatore. E-Mail: dr.p.vikkraman@gmail.com
Mr. K. KUMARAVEL Professor and Head, Department of Management Sciences, Nandha College of Technology, Erode. E-Mail:kumarmba2002@gmail.com
Mr. U. DINESH KUMAR Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies, Erode Sengunthar Engineering College, Thudupathi, Erode-638057. E-Mail:mail2udinesh@gmail.com.
ABSTRACT
The young consumers form a powerful consumer spending group in their own way. They have their own consumption patterns, motives, feelings and styles. They have been nurtured by companies to cement loyalty so that they will be valuable consumers later. They are also perceived as valuable early adopters. The companies identified their target market as young adults, need to understand their behavior as a consumer in order to get closer and establish a long term relationship with them. This present research aims to profile the young adults consumption patterns for the apparel products on the basis of their decision-making styles. The data was collected from college students aged 18-24 by face-to-face interviews. The reliability and the construct validity of the scales were tested through by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient and exploratory factor analysis.
Key Words Young adults, consumer decision-making styles, factor analysis
A Study on Decision Making Styles of College Students for the Apparel Products With Special Reference to Erode District Dr. P. Vikkraman, Mr. K. Kumaravel and Mr. U. Dinesh Kumar
INTRODUCTION
Research in consumer behaviour has paid considerable attention to consumer decision-making processes among the young adults. Young consumers are recognized as a specialized market segment and often influence purchasing decisions of others. And also they are agents of consumer socialization which is defined as a process by which young people acquire skills, knowledge and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace. In that scope it is important to draw the profile of young adults. In this paper, the young adults were identified through their underlying decision making styles. The apparel products were chosen for the research. The appearance is more important for the young adults, so they play an active role in the purchasing process.
different orders. Most of the youth successfully make these transitions from the teens to the mid-to late 20s. During the childhood, there is an influence of family. But in the late adolescence, the relationship between the parent and the child changes. In that point, the informal groups have an influence on young adults. In this study, the young adults consumption behaviour is investigated on the basis of the apparel consumer products. Apparel products are chosen because they are perceived as aesthetic, symbolic products tied to selfpresentation. In shopping for clothes, people make decisions that will directly affect their appearance. The clothes they select become a means for communicating and enhancing personality, attractiveness and social roles shopping for clothes is a part of an overall life pattern. Clothing is important for young adults because they can gain social appreciation and develop a positive self-esteem via their appearance. For the apparel products, even if they are influenced by their parents or friends, basically they are at the position of decision maker. CONSUMER DECISION-MAKING STYLES Brands targeting young adults need to understand emerging behaviour to get closer to their target market and to establish a relationship with them. In order to understand the behavior of young adults as a consumer, one should
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The youth market is a big and growing market. It is traditionally classified according to age. Young adults are situated in a different category between childhoods to adulthood. The transition from childhood to adulthood is a complex process in which youth who have been dependent on parents throughout childhood start taking definitive steps to achieve measures of financial, residential and emotional independence. It can take place in
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Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.
specify the decision-making styles of them. A consumer decision-making style is defined as a mental orientation characterizing a consumers approach to making choices. It is a basic consumer personality, analogous to the concept of personality in psychology. A Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) is that, consumer decision-making can be explained by 8 major characteristics. Each of them independently represents important mental approaches to consumption. These 8 characteristics are as follows: 1. PERFECTIONIST, HIGH QUALITY CONSCIOUS CONSUMER Perfectionist consumers search for the very best quality in products. Those consumers shop carefully and more systematically and also make comparisons in order to buy the product with the highest quality. 2. BRAND CONSCIOUS, PRICE EQUALS QUALITY CONSUMER Consumers with this characteristic believe that the higher the price of a product, the better the quality. These consumers prefer best selling, advertised brands. They appear to have positive attitudes toward department and specialty stores, where brand names and higher prices are prevalent.
3. NOVELTY-FASHION CONSCIOUS CONSUMER: These consumers are likely to gain excitement and pleasure from seeking out new things. They have motivation to keep up-to-date with styles and fashion trends. They also show variety seeking behaviour. 4. RECREATIONAL
HEDONISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND SHOPPING
The consumers having recreational and hedonistic shopping motivation find shopping pleasant and shop just for the fun of it. Consumers with this trait enjoy the stimulation of looking for and choosing products. 5. PRICE CONSCIOUS, VALUE FOR MONEY CONSUMER Those scoring high on it, look for sale prices and appear conscious of lower prices in general. They aim to get the best value for their money and also they compare the products. 6. IMPULSIVE, CONSUMER CARELESS
These consumers do not plan their shopping. Besides, they are not concerned about how much they spend or about the best buys. Consumers with this style can regret their decisions later.
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7. CONFUSED BY OVER CHOICE CONSUMER Consumers having that kind of decision-making style perceive many brands and stores and they have difficulty in deciding which one to choose. Those consumers experience information overload. 8. HABITUAL, BRAND CONSUMER LOYAL
SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH Even though there are the limitations, it is believed that the results derived from the research will provide significant contributions to companies targeting young adults and also to the academicians working on this subject. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
RESEARCH DESGN
Consumers with this characteristic shop at the same stores and buy the same brands each time. They have favorite brands and stores and form habits in choosing these. OBJECTIVES RESEARCH OF THE
Research design is used in this study is descriptive research, It is concerned with describing the characteristics of a particular individual, or of a group, SAMPLING COLLECTION AND DATA
SAMPLING DESIGN The Sampling used in this research is Non-Probabilistic Convenience Sampling. DATA COLLECTION
The main objective of the present study is to define the decision making styles of young adults as consumers for the apparel products. PERIOD OF THE STUDY The period of the study is during September 2012 to October 2012. LIMITATIONS RESEARCH OF THE
Respondents were determined as college students. Respondents age were restricted from 18 years to 24 years. Respondents are categorized in the form of UG and PG. The Study is Limited to Erode City Only.
The data used in the research was collected from college students by faceto-face interviews. The questionnaire was formed in 2 sections, one was including the multi- item measures of the consumer decision-making styles and the other was including the sociodemographic variables. SAMPLE SIZE Sample Size Respondents is fixed at 300
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PILOT STUDY The questionnaire was pre-tested on 30 respondents (10%) in order to test the clarity of the questions and to identify RESULT AND DISCUSSION
the average completion time. After the necessary improvements and simplifications were done, the questionnaire was applied.
TABLE No. 1 - DEMOGRAPHC CHARACTERSTCS OF RESPONDENTS VARIABLE PROFILE 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Male Female UG PG Below 5000 5000 10000 10001-25000 25001 & Above Below 500 500 1000 1001-2500 2501 & Above NO. OF RESPONDENTS 60 50 50 45 43 31 21 160 140 165 135 6 11 65 218 16 45 92 147 PERCENTAGE 20 17 17 15 14 10 07 53 47 55 45 02 04 22 72 05 15 31 49
Age
Gender Education Category Income Level
Monthly Expenditure
INTERPRETATION The Demographic characteristics of the respondents (Table 1) shows that, out of the total respondents (20%) of them belongs to the age category of 18, followed by the 19-20 age group of 17% each. Most of the respondents were male which consisted of 53% as compare to female which were 47%.The data further revealed that most of the respondents (55%) are under
graduates and remaining(45%) comes under post graduate category, this signifies that education level also plays a dominant role in the decision making styles. It was noted that monthly house hold income of respondents are more than Rs.25000 lies in the category of 72% followed by 22% of respondents income fall in between Rs.10000 and Rs.25000. It implied that only 6% of the respondents income level is below Rs.10000. From the table, it can be
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noted that the monthly expenditure had a positive influence on apparel products because 49% of the respondents monthly expenditure were more than Rs.2500. CRONBACHS ALPHA TEST Cronbach's alpha is a measure of internal consistency, that is, how closely related a set of items are as a group. A "high" value of alpha is often
used (along with substantive arguments and possibly other statistical measures) as evidence that the items measure an underlying (or latent) construct. However, a high alpha does not imply that the measure is unidimensional. If, in addition to measuring internal consistency, you wish to provide evidence that the scale in question is unidimensional, additional analyses can be performed.
RELIABILITY STATISTICS CRONBACH'S ALPHA 0.709 The alpha coefficient for the 27 items is .709, suggesting that the items have relatively high internal consistency. FACTOR ANALYSIS Factor analysis is a method used to transform a set of variables into a small number of linear composite, which have maximum correlation with original values. Factor analysis is used to study a complex product/service in order to identify the major characteristics (or factors) considered as important by the respondents. The purpose of factor analysis is to determine the responses to N OF ITEMS 27 the several numbers of statements which are significantly correlated. If the responses to a number of statements are significantly correlated, it is believed that the statement measures some factors common to all of them. Factor analysis can only be applied to continuous variables or interval scaled variables. A factor analysis is like a regression analysis as it tries to best fit. Factors to a scattered diagram of data in such a way that factor explain the variance associated with the response to each statement.
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KMO AND BARTLETT'S TEST KMO AND BARTLETT'S TEST Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square df Sig. In the above table, Bartletts test of Sphericity and Kaiser- Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy is used to test the appropriate of the factor mode. Bartletts test is used to test the null hypothesis and the variables are not correlated. Since the appropriate chi square statistics is 3.575E3, which I significant at 1% level, the test lead to rejection of null hypothesis. The value of KMO statistics (0.782) which is also greater than 1% level.
.782 3.575E3 351 .000
DETERMNATON OF FACTORS BASED ON EGEN VALUES In this approach, only the factors with eigen values greater than 1.0 are retained. The other factors are not included in this model. Since there are eleven components that possess Eigen values and which are greater than 1.0 and eleven components are said to be extracted from the total of twenty seven factors.
TOTAL VARIANCE EXPLAINED:

Total Variance Explained EXTRACTION SUMS INITIAL EIGEN OF SQUARED VALUES LOADINGS % OF CUM. % OF CUM. TOTAL TOTAL VAR. % VAR. % 3.252 12.043 12.043 3.252 12.043 12.043 2.843 10.529 22.572 2.843 10.529 22.572 2.127 7.877 30.449 2.127 7.877 30.449 1.901 7.039 37.488 1.901 7.039 37.488 1.745 6.464 43.952 1.745 6.464 43.952 1.577 5.839 49.791 1.577 5.839 49.791 1.441 5.337 55.129 1.441 5.337 55.129 1.309 4.849 59.978 1.309 4.849 59.978 1.292 4.784 64.762 1.292 4.784 64.762 1.203 4.454 69.217 1.203 4.454 69.217 1.082 4.006 73.222 1.082 4.006 73.222 0.988 3.66 76.882 0.835 3.092 79.974 0.818 3.029 83.003 0.777 2.876 85.879 0.648 2.402 88.281 0.597 2.209 90.49
COMP.
ROTATION SUMS OF SQUARED LOADINGS TOTAL 2.82 2.215 2.195 2.121 1.718 1.679 1.552 1.465 1.464 1.329 1.211 % OF VAR. 10.445 8.205 8.131 7.857 6.364 6.217 5.749 5.426 5.423 4.922 4.484 CUM. % 10.445 18.65 26.78 34.638 41.001 47.218 52.968 58.394 63.817 68.739 73.222
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
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18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
0.525 0.488 0.443 0.346 0.213 0.203 0.135 0.107 0.073 0.037
1.944 1.806 1.639 1.28 0.789 0.751 0.498 0.397 0.269 0.135
92.435 94.241 95.88 97.16 97.949 98.7 99.198 99.595 99.865 100
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Comp. Component, Var. Variance, Cum. - Cumulative
It is observed that the labelled Eigen value used highlights that total variance attributed to the factor. Factor 1 accounts for 3.252 which is 12.043 % of the total variance likewise the second factor acounts for 2.843 and first three factors combined to an account of 30.449 of the total variance. The eleventh factor showed the variance of 1.082 the total value of 73.222%
Rotated Component Matrixa
represents the combination of all these factors Rotated component matrix From the rotated component matrix table it is inferred that eleven distinct components are extracted based on their Eigen values which are greater than 1. In the rotated component matrix table the factors are named as based on the loading associated with them.
1 X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 X11 X12 X13 X14 X15 X16 X17 X18
COMPONENT 5 6 7 0.867 0.782
10
11
0.883 0.865 0.587 0.762 0.602 0.755 0.802 0.692 0.612
0.824 0.959
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X19 X20 0.908 X21 X22 0.881 X23 X24 X25 0.91 X26 0.93 X27 0.886
0.962
0.714
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
It is learnt from the above table that the rotated component matrix indicates the relationship between the factors and individual variables, it is seen that several factors are having high correlation with the same component, for better interpretability, we moved to the next step. The above table is the result of the varimax procedure of factor rotation. Rotation does not affect the percentage of total variance explained. However, different methodology rotation may result in the identification of different factors. Interpretation is formulated by identifying the variables that have large loadings on the same factor. That factor can be interpreting in terms of variables that have high values on it. CONCLUSION In this present study, it was aimed to profile young adults as consumers through their decision-making styles for apparel products. Decision-making styles are fundamental to marketing, because they determine consumer behaviour and they are relatively stable
over time, hence are relevant for market segmentation. First of all exploratory factor analysis were conducted. Through that six decision-making dimensions were identified relevant to the young adults. So it can be concluded that some of the consumer decision-making dimensions were also consistent for young adults like in the other different cultures. These are recreational- hedonistic consumers, brand conscious, price equals quality consumers, perfectionistic consumers, confused by overchoice consumers, influenced by significant others and novelty-fashion conscious consumers. Future studies on consumer decionmaking styles should take into account the youth market as a whole and identify the decision-making dimensions for them. Also the differentiation among the dimensions should be evaluated through some of the demographic variables like gender and age.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Churchill, Jr. G. A., Dawn I. (2005), Marketing Research, ThompsonSouth Western, USA. Fannin R. (1984), Marketing to Teens: All Talk and No Action, Marketing and Media Decisions, 19,9, 42-47. Feltham T.S. (1998), Leaving Home: Brand Purchase Influences on Young Adults, Journal of Consumer Marketing, 15,4, 372-385. Hafstrom J. L., Chae J. S. (1992), Consumer Decision-Making Styles: Comparison Between United States and Korean Young Consumers, The Journal of Consumer Affairs, 26,1, 146-157. Kwan.C.Y., Yeung K.W. , Au. K.F.(2004), Decision-making behaviour towards casual wear buying: a study of young consumers in mainland China, Journal of management & world business research. Lachance M. J., Beaudoin P., Robitaille J. (2003), Adolescents Brand Sensitivity in Apparel: Influence of Three Socialization Agents, International Journal of Consumer Studies, 27,1, 47-57. Maria E. Canabal(march 2002), Decision making styles of young South Indian consumers: An exploratory study - Statistical data included, College student journal. Moschis G.P, Moore R.L. (1979), Decision Making Among The Young: A Socialization Perspective, Journal of Consumer Research, 6, 2, 101112. Paul Peter et al.,(2005) Consumer Behavior and Marketing Stratergy, Tata McGraw Hill, Indian Edition, 7th Edition.
Sproles G. B., Kendall E.L. (1986), A Methodology for Profiling Consumers Decision-Making Styles, The Journal of Consumer Affairs, 20,2 267-279. Tatzel, M. (1982), Skill and Motivation in Clothes Shopping: FashionConcious, Independent, Anxious and Apathetic Consumers, Journal of Retailing, 58, 4, 90-97.
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A STUDY ON DECISION MAKING STYLES OF COLLEGE STUDENTS FOR THE APPAREL PRODUCTS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ERODE DISTRICT

Key Words Young adults, consumer decision-making styles, factor analysis

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

Gender Education Category Income Level

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

.782 3.575E3 351 .000

TOTAL VARIANCE EXPLAINED:

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

1 X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 X11 X12 X13 X14 X15 X16 X17 X18

COMPONENT 5 6 7 0.867 0.782

0.883 0.865 0.587 0.762 0.602 0.755 0.802 0.692 0.612

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

Namex International Journal of Management Research

Vol. 2, Issue No. 2, July December 2012.

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