Journal International : Consumer Behaviour

The Consumer Decision Making Styles of Mobile Phones among The University Level Students in Jordan

Ziad Moh'd Ali Smadi

Al-al-Bayt University , Faculty of Business & Finance

Department of Business Administration - Assistant Professor

E-mail: ziad34@hotmail.com

Bahjat Eid Al-jawazneh

Al-al-Bayt University , Faculty of Business & Finance

Department of Business Administration - Assistant Professor

E-mail: jawazneh9@yahoo.com

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the decision-making styles of university level students in Jordan, specifically the research sought to identify the purchasing decision styles among the university level students in Jordan, with a main hypothesis that states, the university level students in Jordan do not have a certain a decision making style when purchasing a mobile phone, the researchers applied a tested research instrument of (Sproles & Kendall, 1986) to measure the consumer decision making style. A simple random sampling technique was utilized, thus 390 questionnaires have been distributed to different Jordanian university students in national capital region of Jordan where many public and private universities are located, the findings revealed that the university level students in Jordan follow a decision making style that is characterized by being perfectionist, brand conscious, price conscious, Impulsive, confused by over choice, and brand-loyal consumer. Besides it concluded that, male and female university students in Jordan, do have some differences in their choices and the way they decide when they buy a mobile phone.

Keywords: Consumer behavior, Decision making styles, University students, Mobile

phones, Jordan.

INTODUCTION

Consumer decision making styles have become an interesting area that poses a challenge to marketers, researchers and practitioners, but unfortunately there are very few published studies in Jordan as far as the researchers know, covering this important area of interest.

Consumer decision-making is defined as the behavioral patterns of consumers that proceed, determine and follow the decision making process for the acquisition of need satisfying products, ideas or services (Zeithaml, 1988; Levy, 1999)..

            Jordan is a country that opened its arm to globalization which is manifested by its liberal trade policies and its openness to all forms of information and media communication which in return made a reshape to its culture and Jordanian consumer behavior, thus a study of this kind will enlighten marketers in Jordan on how to make a fit between their customers environment and marketing strategies.

Based on individual mental orientations, each consumer develops and practices this decision making process in different ways which have been characterized as decision making styles (Sproles & Kendall,1986). It is becoming so important for marketers all over the world to know how young consumers decide which particular product, brand or service to purchase. The consumer buying behavior is becoming an important research area that has an effect on the marketing process of the firm because it is ability to establish and maintain satisfying exchange relationships requires an understanding of buying behavior. Buying behavior is the decision processes and acts of people involved in buying and using product.

Many previous studies focused mainly on the decision making process, but (Sproles, 1979) argues that consumers may sometimes typically rely on simple strategies, rather than going through a series of steps or processes rationally when they made purchase decisions. This is why (Sproles and Kendall 1986) pioneered to research on consumer decision-making processes by classifying consumers into different decision-making styles.

To develop an effective marketing strategy companies must pay more attention to consumers and study their decision-making process. Understanding buying-related decision-making styles of consumers is important for companies’ strategic marketing activities, and effective communication with the youth segment can be helped by understanding the psychological processes that affect their behavior. However, in the rapidly changing competitive environment with over choice due to increase in the number and variety of goods and retail outlets, excessive marketing communications that provide an abundance of information, much of it with mixed messages, sophisticated and complex products, decreasing inter-brand differences, and increasing counterfeiting and look alike products, some consumers feel overwhelmed and find it difficult to decide (Hafstrom, Chae and Chae,1992; Walsh, Mitchell and Henning-Thurau, 2001a). 

RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES

Some researchers have advised that consumers are “value driven” (Zeithaml, 1988; Levy, 1999). In the extant consumer behavior literature, most studies assume that all consumers approach shopping with certain decision-making traits that combine to form a consumer’s decision-making style (Walsh, Mitchell & Henning-Thurau, 2001).

(Sproles and Kendall 1986) developed the Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) to determine the basic characteristics of consumer decision-making styles. The CSI has eight dimensions:

1)    Perfectionist, high-quality conscious consumer – a characteristic measuring the degree to which a consumer searches carefully and systematically for the best quality in products.

2)    Brand conscious, “price equals quality” consumer – measuring a consumer’s orientation to buying the more expensive, well-known brands.

3)    Novelty-fashion conscious consumer – a characteristic identifying consumers who appear to like new and innovative products and gain excitement from seeking out new things.

4)    Price conscious, “value-formoney” consumer  –  a characteristic identifying those with particularly high consciousnessof sale prices and lower prices in general.

5)    Impulsive, careless consumer – identifying those who tend to buy on the spur of the moment and appear unconcerned how much they spend or getting “best buys”.

6)    Confused by over choice consumer – a characteristic identifying those consumers who perceive too many brands and stores from which to choose, experiencing information overload in the market.

7)    Habitual, brand-loyal consumer – a characteristic indicating consumers who have favorite brands and stores, who have formed habits in choosing these repetitively.

(Mitchell and Walsh 2004) made a comparison between the decision-making styles of male and female shoppers in Germany. The researchers confirmed the construct validity of all eight CSI factors for female shoppers and four of the factors for male shoppers. They concluded that male individuals were slightly less likely to be perfectionists, somewhat less novelty and fashion conscious, and less likely to be confused when making purchases than their female counterparts. The sheer magnitude of this group of young generation has had a profound impact on current business because members of this generation 'love to shop' (Taylor and Cosenza 2002).

An increasing number of males are doing grocery shopping; males tend to spend less per shopping activity and spend less time in the store. Family income is another constraint to search behavior. Households with less income are more likely to spend less time on shopping (Davies and Bell 1991).

(Slama and Tashchian 1985) concluded that purchase involvement and search behavior are linked to demographic characteristics of the consumer and their household. They asserted that females are more highly involved and there is greater involvement when there are children at home. In addition to that, they suggest other factors such as marital status, age, education and income of the consumer are closely related to purchase involvement and search.

A research on decision making styles of young Turkish consumers found that young Turkish consumers rated quality of the product as the most influential factor on their decision making, followed by time (perceiving shopping as an enjoyable activity), price, brand, and finally, information utilisation/ confusion by choice. There were significant differences between male students and female students to some of the factor items (Gönen, E. & Özmete,E.,2006).

Another study investigated the differing approaches of male and female Malaysian consumers toward shopping and buying activities concluded that, six of eight male factors and nine female factors were similar for both males and females: quality consciousness, brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, confused by over choice, satisfying and value seeking (Mokhlis, S.& Salleh, H.,2009).

In their research on The influence of Internet shopping mall characteristics and user traits on purchase intent , (Kim and Shim 2002) found that around 40 percent of shoppers classified themselves as sophisticated quality shoppers, on the other hand Brand conscious shoppers believe that these types of international brands result in better quality. Brand influences have been found to be a critical factor in consumer purchasing processes (Cleaver, 1985; Sproles & Kendall, 1986).

During the individual decision-making process, the price conscious shopper may consider the greatest value at the lowest price. (Janiszewski and Lichtenstein,1999) found that if all product options were at the same benefit level, consumers would buy the lowest priced alternative

According t (Beatty and Ferrell,1998), the consumer’s positive moods influence shopping enjoyment and purchasing decisions, in addition to that store attractiveness keeps many consumers coming back to the same store. How consumers view store image has long been considered an important part of consumer decision-making (Baker et al., 1992).

STATEMENT of THE PROBLEM

The higher education system in Jordan has evolved considerably in the past five years. In years between 2000/2001 and 2006/2007, Jordan has seen an increased demand for higher education with enrollments growing at an annual rate of 14 percent from 77,841 to 218,900students (world bank,2009), that makes the university students a hot market segment for researches.

Aside from what is mentioned above the university students’ market segment is faced with an endless array of choices especially when it comes to mobile phones, the gadget that they cannot live without, and characterized by the willingness of its consumers to spend on it.

However, little research has been conducted to better understand this group of consumersdecision making styles; hence this study sought an answer for the following problems:

1)    What are the most dominant purchasing decision making styles among Jordanian university students.

2)    What is the ranking of these styles in terms of their practice.

3)    Is their any difference in the respondents’ decision making styles pertains to gender.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A descriptive and analytical methods have been utilized in this study, in addition to that the researchers applied a tested research instrument of (Sproles & Kendall, 1986) to measure the consumer decision making style of the university level students in Jordan, that instrument is capable of measuring such a style since it is universal in its approach,

according to some practitioners and academicians in Jordan whom the researchers consulted during the preparation phase of the research, the instrument is composed of the two parts:

The first Part covers the demographic profile of the respondent while the second part includes the consumer decision making styles.

Nominal scale was used to get the answers of the respondents on their demographic profile, while likert scale was used to allow respondents to rate their purchasing styles, which is ranging from strongly agree as the highest and strongly disagree as the lowest.

Population and Sample of the Study

A simple random sampling technique was utilized, thus 390 questionnaires have been distributed to different Jordanian university students in national capital region of Jordan where many public and private universities are located and offer all kinds of courses, and 358 or (91.7%) of the questionnaires were retrieved, 17 or (4.3%) of which were excluded for not meeting validation requirements, hence 341 or (about 87.4%) of the questionnaires were valid for analysis.
 Data Collection Method
            The researchers relied on a secondary source of data such as references and published researches in the field of consumer behaviors, which contributed to the development of the theoretical framework and let researchers gain more deep understanding on the topic. In addition to that Primary data were also obtained through the main instrument which is a tested questionnaire.
Statistical Treatment
           Several statistical techniques have been applied in this study such as;
1. Descriptive analysis such as: Averages and standard deviations.
2. One sample t- test was used to test the main hypothesis.
3. Analysis of variance one way ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis regarding the sex,
educations, position, experience, activity, aside from that, Post Hoc multiple comparisons
Scheffe was also utilized.
4. Pearson correlation was used to measure the inter-correlation between the different decision
making styles
For the sake of discussion and interpretation of results of the study, the researchers relied on the
following equation to compute the range:
Range= (the highest average value- the lowest average value) / (number of levels): (5-1)/ (3)
=1.33
    Therefore the results will be as the following:
1. If the range of answers is between (1- 2.33), it represents a week average response rate.
2. If the range of answers is between (2.34- 3.67), it represents a medium average response
rate.
3. If the range of responses is more than (3.68), it would be of high average response rate.

Summary of Conclusion 
1. As consumers the university students in Jordan follow a certain decision making style dominated by being novelty fashion conscious, price conscious, brand loyal customers, impulsive, careless consumer, confused by over choice consumer, brand conscious, and perfectionist high quality consumer, but that style of decision making was not given high rating rather an upper middle rating.
2. University students in Jordan pay attention to the quality of mobile phones; this is manifested by the special effort they exert to choose the very best quality of Mobile since their standards and expectations for Mobile that they buy are very high.
3. Respondents are not brand conscious, but still believe in the higher price of Mobile the better in
quality, because imitated phones flow from south East Asia and being sold at a very low price, in order to minimize the risk of buying a fake one, consumers prefer to buy from well known and authorized dealers.
4. Fashion does not have big influence on Jordanian students decision making styles, because mostly care for good and attractive design rather than trendy one. While some enjoy and have fun when buying a new and exciting Mobile to the extent that they usually have one or more phone of the very newest style.
5. Price normally matters when it comes to mobile phones and that is also the case with young consumers in Jordan, since majority look carefully to find the best value for their money and usually lower prices Mobiles appeal to them, which is why they buy as much as possible at discount prices.
6. It takes time with university level students in Jordan to shop for getting the best Mobile, and that is probably because they carefully watch how much they spend for buying Mobile, aside from that they also plan their shopping for Mobile more carefully than they do. 
7. Respondents are confused over what to choose because there are so many brands of mobiles available in market that share similar features and functions, in addition to that young consumers are gaining more knowledge about this product which makes their decision a difficult one. 
8. A big number of the University level students in Jordan have a favorite brand of Mobile that they buy over and over, the reason behind that, it is once they find suitable brand of Mobile that they Like they stick with it and even go to the same stores each time they shop. 
9. The male and female students in Jordan do have some differences in their choices and the way they decide when they buy a mobile phone, the only decision making style where there is no differences between males and females is, confused by over choice consumer decision making
style.

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