Adolescents’ Market Segmentation: Using CSI as a Tool

Abstract

Purpose of this article:

The study aims to examine the adolescents’ decision-making style and shopping orientation using consumer style inventory (CSI) as a segmentation tool. It proposes that adolescents’ decision-making styles are quite different from the adult consumers. Here, the researchers develop a typology that is based on the dimensions of CSI and its ability to predict the homogeneous cluster.

Design/methodology/approach:

The study is based on the clustering of adolescents on the basis of their decision-making styles. The study was carried out in India. A sample of 215 students has been taken. Factor analysis, cluster analysis which is followed by discriminant analysis, has been used in the study.

Findings:

The article provides a significant segmentation of adolescents’ market on the basis of their decision-making style. And at last in this article, we conclude that the adolescents have different decision-making styles than the adult consumers. Six out of eight dimensions of the Sproles and Kendall (1986) are relevant to the Indian adolescents. On the basis of these traits/styles, the adolescents are grouped into three different clusters, which are homogeneous and identifiable in nature.

Originality/value:

This article fulfils an identified need to study about the adolescents and how they have been clustered into different segments. The CSI is used as segmentation tool. This is the first study to segment the Indian adolescents market on the basis of their decision-making styles.

Keywords

Adolescents Market Segmentation CSI Decision-making Style Price Consciousness Shopping Orientation Brand Consciousness

Introduction

In the real world of globalization, the consumers are familiar with different types of product categories and store choices (Darden & Reynolds, 1971; Furse, Punj & Stewart, 1984). With this the companies have increased their promotional activities, the promotional and distribution channel, which makes the consumer decision process more difficult and multifaceted. Bakewell et al. (2006) revealed that when consumers of different age group and gender engage in shopping, they display different types of decision-making styles by guiding different rules and strategies for different types of product categories. Baiocco, Laghi and D’Alessio (2009) reported that decision-making styles among adolescents are correlated with their sensation seeking and the locus of control. The decision-making process becomes more multifarious and more important for the adolescent consumer. Large range of product lines, different channel and the retail stores, such as shopping malls, other publicity materials, traditional media, electronic media sources, have expanded the choice of consumers. It has been a common practice that the consumers interact within the market place and use different decision styles during different situations using different purchasing strategies.

Several researches have confirmed the Sproles and Kendal’s (1986) eight decision-making styles (Leo, Bennette & Hartell, 2005), while other researches have suggested certain modifications in the consumer style inventory (CSI) (Leo et al., 2005). The reliability and validity of the original CSI was based on the female sample in USA (Sproles & Kendal, 1986). Many subsequent researches were carried out on US samples (Hafstrom, Chae & Jung, 1992) and in other countries also (Canabal, 2002; Hiu, Siu, Wang & Chang, 2001; Leo et al., 2005; Radder & Pieterson, 2006; Walsh, Mitchell & Henning-Thurau, 2001; Wang, 2003). It is apparent that a better understanding about the behaviour of Indian adolescents and their decision styles which will contribute the marketers to fulfil their needs. The segmentation of adolescents into different groups will help marketers to make a distinction both at the store as well as product level. According to Sproles and Kendall (1986), consumers decision-making style ‘helps to profile an individual consumer style, educate consumers about their specific decision-making characteristics, and counsel families on financial management’. According to Fan, Xio and Xu (1997), a cross-cultrual comparison of consumers decision-making styles would contribute towards understanding the effect of culture, marketing environment on consumer decision-making styles. Therefore, this research will contribute to the literature about the consumer decision-making styles and consumer education efforts in India and in other Asian countries.

Market segmentation is labelling the market into identifiable and homogenous groups for which the marketers may adopt specific marketing strategies and marketing mix (Smal & Tak, 2005). The segmentation of the adolescent market on the basis of their decision-making traits provides the marketers an opportunity and chance to offer brands, products and services. The homogeneous clustering of adolescents into different groups helps to respond to the problem how to reach a certain cluster using different communication media. For the last few years, the researchers from different disciplines have necessitated the segmentation of the adolescent market on the basis of CSI. For the last two decades, the global marketers and the managers have been attempting to explore the Asian market with a special focus on the Indian market. The emergence of consumerism in India has increased its retail sales from 1990 to till date (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 2013). Because of this the Indian retail market is estimated to be US$ 450 billion and is considered as one of the top five retail markets in the world (Mckinsey & Company, 2005). Thus, in the light of the above retail development, the study about the Indian adolescent consumer behaviour is noteworthy.

Thus, the main purpose of this study is to examine the generalizability of the Sproles and Kendall (1986) among the adolescents consumer decision styles in India (Table 7). In extension to this, the study also identified distinct clusters and groups of the adolescents on the basis of their purchase behaviour and decision-making style, that is, the CSI has been used for the segmentation of the Indian adolescents.

Literature Review

A review of literature has been carried out, which underline the several aspects regarding the decision-making styles (Bakewell & Mitchell, 2003; McDonald, 1993; Sproles, 1985; Sproles & Kendall, 1986), on categorizing the specific studies, such as consumer decision-making style, information search behaviour, shopping orientation. However, the items used in the above traits are quite similar and overlapping, which creates confusion in the decision-making styles and the shopping orientation. Sproles and Kendall (1986) had developed the consumers’ decision-making, inventory and identified the common traits of the consumers and their shopping orientation towards the product.

Consumer literature proposed that the decision-making construct can be categorized into three major approaches: ‘the psychographic/lifestyle approach’, ‘consumer typology approach’ and ‘the consumer characteristic approach’.

So from the above three approaches, consumer characteristic approaches are widely acknowledged by consumer researchers because it focuses on the cognitive and affective aspects of consumer behaviour and it mainly describes the consumers’ mental disposition towards the decision-making. Sproles and Kendall (1986) have defined consumer decision-making style as ‘a mental orientation characterizing a consumers approach to making choices’. The consumer style concept is basically concerned with the ‘cognitive and affective aspects’ of consumer psychology and also it is mainly concerned with different personality traits. Psychologist reveals that personality traits are the factor which has an influence on human behaviour. Although adolescence is an important stage in which new unsupervised and dangerous circumstances ask the adolescent to decide on his own and to practice the consequences of his/her decisions (Baillie, Lovato, Johnson & Kalaw, 2005; D’Alessio, Baiocco & Laghi, 2006) relatively few studies examined the significance of decision-making in this developmental stage (Crone, Vendel & van der Molen, 2003). Several studies have shown their interest on the relation between personality and decision-making. These models suggested the existence of different typologies of decision-making style (Franken & Muris, 2005). In previous researches, we found no gender differences (Baiocco, Laghi, D’Alessio, Guerrieri & Di Chiacchio, 2007; Spicer & Sadler-Smith, 2005). A study was carried out by Joyce, Arnold, Pereira and Yu (2010) about the Chinese consumer decision-making style and it revealed that Chinese consumers have utilitarian and hedonic shopping styles. It has been seen that the consumers’ decision-making style varied according to individuals’ self-construal (Sproles & Kendall, 1986). A study was carried out by Bakewell and Mitchell (2004) about the male consumers’ decision-making style and it was found that males’ consumer decision-making style is quite different from the females and also they constitute a meaningful clusters. An exploratory study was carried out by Sproles (1985) who identified 50 items which are related to consumers’ cognitive and affective aspects of consumer behaviour. Sproles and Sproles (1986) have developed a scale CSI consisting of 40 items under eight decision-making style. Sproles and Kendall (1986) have identified eight consumer decision-making styles ‘perfectionism or high-quality consciousness’, ‘brand consciousness’, ‘novelty/fashion consciousness’, ‘recreational, hedonistic shopping consciousness’, ‘price and value for money’ ‘shopping consciousness’, ‘impulsiveness, confusion from over choice’ and ‘habitual and brand-loyal orientations’ towards consumption. The CSI has been used in many studies signifying an organized, vigorous methodology for measuring shopping orientations and behaviour of adolescent consumers. Shim (1996) had classified eight decision-making styles into three categories: ‘utilitarian’, ‘social and conspicuous’ and ‘undesirable orientation’. Kamaruddin and Mokhlis (2003) have classified the eight approaches into three types of decision-making: (i) ‘desirable’, (ii) ‘undesirable’ and (iii) ‘social and hedonistic’ (Figure 2).

The generalizability of CSI was investigated in cross-cultural settings using samples from different countries: India, Greece, USA and New Zealand (Lysonski, Durvasula & Zotos, 1996). Lysonski et al. (1996) revealed that CSI is more applicable to developed countries (USA and New Zealand) than to economically developing countries (India and Greece). Researchers have attempted to find the generalizability of CSI in different countries like China (Hiu et al., 2001; Siu, Wang, Chang & Hui, 2001), India (Canabal, 2002; Patel, 2008), UK (Mitchell & Bates, 1998), Germany (Walsh & Vincent, 2001; Walsh et al., 2001), South Africa (Radder et al., 2006) and Turkey (Gonen & Ozmete, 2006; Kavas & Yesilada, 2007). There is a general consensus among the researchers that consumer’s decision-making style could vary across different culture. Few of the researches attempted to explore the antecedents and consequences of consumer decision-making styles. McDonald (1993) has investigated the relationship between consumer decision styles and consumers’ catalogue loyalty. Shim and Koh (1997) have investigated the impact of socialization agents and social-structural factors on adolescents’ decision styles. Ramasamy, Au, and Yeung (2010) have explored the effect of life-style characteristics on the consumers’ decisions styles among Chinese youngsters. Cowart and Goldsmith (2007) have investigated the consumers’ decisionmaking style during an apparel shopping. Thus, CSI cannot be used in its original form without some modifications. Sproles and Kendall (1986) recommended checking the generalizability of CSI among the different groups of population.

Thus, the familiarity and the awareness about the adolescent consumer decision-making style is a necessity for the marketers as it is intimately tied to the adolescents purchase behaviour. Thus, on the basis of their shopping behaviour and decision styles, marketers have to differentiate their offerings in terms of both products and service.

Indian Context

The landscape of the global economy has transformed dramatically due to which the South Asian countries have taken an expanded role. Modern economic instability has sparkled the marketers concern about the purchasing behaviour and patterns of the consumers in Southeast Asian countries like India, Malaysia etc. India is presently classified as one of the developed nations in most of the developing countries.

In spite of challenging environment especially during Asian financial crises (1997–1998), India generated an average GDP growth rate of nearly 4.79 per cent per annum (1991–2005). This growth rate is more than doubled average household income from MYR1.147 per month in 1990 to MYR3, 223 a month in 2004. As the retailing industry constitutes the significant portion of Indian economy and the rise of consumerism, consumer’s high disposable income, rising population, increased availability of credits, increasing FDI have resulted into a tremendous growth in the Indian retailing sector.

The Indian government’s new policy to establish India as a prime regional shopping destination, many new shopping sites/areas have been developed, many new shopping campaigns and carnivals are developed to attract consumers from local markets as well as outside. Indian consumers especially adolescents are exposed to wider range of products, brands, quality and prices than ever before.

As per above discussion, marketers and consumer educators are much concerned to serve consumers and hence their decision making style (Canabal, 2002). Thus, in order to develop appropriate marketing strategies which are specially meant for adolescents, the study about their decision-making pattern needed to be thoroughly investigated. The present study attempts to identify the decision-making style of the Indian adolescents.

Thus, above we review existing literature on shopping, shopping motivation, consumer’s decision-making styles. The concept of shopping style are supposed to differ across different product classes, but the decision-making styles of individuals are supposed to be stable during different purchasing situations. Thus, the researchers have tried to find the individuals decision-making traits and segment them on the basis of their similar traits. The knowledge about the individuals decision-making traits does not only helps the researchers in the field of consumer behaviour but also helps marketers in order to better position their products and making strategies accordingly. Thus, the review of relevant literatures on CSI and consumer decision style will set a foundation for further study (Table 1).

Hypothesis Formation

In current years, there has been a remarkable increase in the adolescent spending habit. The enthusiasm and the keenness with which adolescents undertake their job is evident in their vigorous involvement in the purchasing of their own durable and non-durable products (Areni & Kim, 1993). Shopping has been considered as a female task (Miller, 1998) and most of the men avoid shopping as they preserve the sense of ‘masculinity’. From the last 25 years, shopping has been viewed as ‘Women’s work’ and is still being considered as ‘hateful’ by the men counterparts (Dholakia, 1999). Campbell (1997) has described shopping as an ‘Instrumental v’s expressive dichotomy’. The instrumental is basically concerned with ‘need driven’ while, the expressive purchasing is being concerned with wanting and desire. Studies on the compulsive shopping also revealed the gender differences, that is, females are mostly indulging in the compulsive buying process as compared to male (Dittmar & Drury, 2000). Literature revealed different number of study in different cultural context. Canabal (2002) conducted a survey in India and reported eight different decision-making traits. Fan and Xio (1998) conducted a survey in China and revealed five decision-making traits, in South Korea seven factor solutions was found.

From above, we have seen that most of the researches were focused on the gender-specific studies and they all are based on the young adults. Today’s adolescents in dual earner/single parent families are expected to participate in the family shopping and are showing some decisionmaking traits which are quite different from the adults.

Adolescent consumers provide an appealing subject for the consumer behaviour research on the basis of four different issues (Grant & Waite, 2003). First, during the transition period in adolescence, they seek to create their own individual personas and form behaviour patterns, attitudes and values, hence their own spending habits. They generally acquire objects to characterize themselves and to build an individuality and uniqueness of their own making (Holbrook & Schindler, 1989). Several prototypes are carried well into individual’s lifetimes (Moschis, 1987). Second, adolescents have influence on the familial decision making (Grant & Waite, 2003; Kaur & Singh, 2006). Third, they are playing the role of change agent for the society and culture (Leslie, Sparling & Owen, 2001). And finally, from a marketing perspective, adolescents are considered as a focused market segment that forms a dominant consumer spending cluster in their own way (Grant & Waite, 2003; Moschis, 1987). Although adolescence is a important stage in which new unsupervised and dangerous circumstances ask the adolescent to decide on his own and to practice the consequences of his decisions (Baillie et al., 2005; D’Alessio et al., 2006) relatively few studies examined the significance of decision-making in this developmental stage (Crone et al., 2003).

One of the major issues of Sproles and Kendall’s CSI (1986) is related to its generalizability. The original authors acknowledge that their results could not be generalized to all consumers. Most of the studies (Canabal, 2002; Hiu et al., 2001; Walsh et al., 2001) conducted in this field used youths and adults as their target population. Adolescents comprise a significant marketing area. As adolescence period is the second stage of life which leads towards maturity. Adolescence period are different from childhood, but their struggle towards ego development and emotional skills deny them from adult categorization. Hence, the study about this particular age group (11–17) years needs to be further explored by the researchers. Thus, from the above discussion, we hypothesize that:

H1: Adolescents decision-making styles are different from the previous studies on adults.

Sproles and Kendall’s (1986) novel work and subsequent researches were mainly devised to grade youngsters on the attributes, characteristics being acquire by them. But the grading of adolescent consumers on CSI has not been done so far. The next consistent and the coherent move is to segment adolescent consumers on the basis of their attributes, characteristics, traits to identify different segments/cluster of adolescents who think in a similar way. The linkage between the adolescents decision styles and the clusters of adolescents has seldom been done so far, yet it is crucial and of vital importance when determining whether any homogeneous market segments are identical and sizeable for different marketing players and the managers to change their promotional strategies or to launch a new product. Once such clusters being identified, they are targeted by the marketers and the retailers. Many markets are clustered on the basis of gender, but here we segment the market on the basis of a particular age group and on the basis of their decision-making traits and attributes. Thus, we hypothesize that:

H2: Adolescents decision-making styles differ within the population and form meaningful clusters.

Methodology

The Instrument

The main objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness and efficacy of CSI as a measurement tool for the adolescents’ decision-making style, and also to examine the different adolescents’ decision-making segments.

Since the CSI being developed for the adults, so a number of alterations had been carried out in framing the questions as per the adolescents’ comprehension. Like in Sproles and Kendall’s (1986) original scale the questions were like ‘the more expensive brands are usually my choice’. For the purpose of this research as the adolescents being the respondents, the questions were framed as ‘I usually choose the more expensive brands’. Also in the original CSI, there were few ambiguous words like ‘best’ and ‘perfect’. So what we have seen that it’s quite unclear about whether it refers to ‘price’, ‘durability’, ‘image’ or ‘sustainable’. In total, 38 items were taken on a five-point Likert scale (‘1’ = ‘Strongly Agree’; ‘5’ = ‘Strongly disagree’).

Sample

A sample of 215 students has been taken which comprised of 64.3 per cent boys and 35.7 per cent of girls. The data collection was done at secondary schools and the degree colleges. Before survey questionnaire filled, principals and teachers were contacted for approval. This guarantees the higher response rate and the personal contact with the respondents (adolescents). Both the researchers explained the purpose of the study to the respondents. Convenience sampling was used to collect the data. Convenience sampling is one of the ‘non-probability sampling techniques where the subjects are selected because of their convenient accessibility and proximity to the researcher’ and more than 65 per cent of adolescents belong to the nuclear family household (married couples with adolescent child).

Analysis

According to Hair et al. (2012), ‘the dimensionality of the scale was examined by considering the factor solution, loadings and Cronbach alpha for each factor’. Initially principal component analysis with orthogonal rotation has been used to analyse the data. Orthogonal rotation has been used to eliminate the problem of co-linearity and is used at the time of data reduction. Again a vari-max rotation was employed to assist the data interpretation. An eight-factor solution has been extracted which account for the 56.7 per cent of the variance. The eigenvalues were ranged from 1.032 to 3.29. It has been seen that some factors have low Cronbach alpha value, that is, less than the stringent criteria, that is, 0.60 or above, as the original scale had been developed for providing the description of the female buying behaviour, so the validity problem will be foreseen when surveying for the adolescents. Also a few of the items have cross loading with different factors which results in lower alpha value as expected (Peterson, 1994). After the analysis, we have summarized six factor solutions.

Table 1.

Some important Literature Review

Approaches	Meaning	Author
Psychographic/lifestyle approach,	This approach identified more than 100 characteristics relevant to consumer behaviour. According to this approach consumer activity, interest, opinion can be very effective in measuring consumer personality and predicting consumer behaviour.	Lastovicka, 1982
Consumer typology approach	It defines consumer motives and attitudes by classifying consumers into a limited number of types, which differs from each other.	Kenson, 1999
Consumer characteristics approach	It mainly concerned with the cognitive and effective orientation, which is specifically related to consumer decision making	Sproles and Sproles, 1990

Source: Authors’ own.

In order to segment the adolescents into the different decision-making groups, Ward’s method of cluster analysis is being used as suggested by Punj and Stewart (1983). The result of cluster analysis shows three cluster solutions. After that discriminant analysis was performed to identify the discriminating variables among these clusters. The value of chi-square and the value of canonical correlations for both these functions were quite high (Table 5). The percentage of cases which was correctly classified by the classification matrix for the analysis sample was 88.4 per cent and 80.9 per cent for the holdout sample.

Results

Adolescents Decision-making Style

In order to obtain decision-making style among adolescents in India, first, factor analysis was performed. As shown in Table 3, six factor solutions were obtained. Sproles and Kendall’s (1986) original eight decision-making style results in only six decision-making style for the adolescents (11–17) years. The alpha value for four factors were greater than 0.60, namely, ‘Innovative and fun conscious’, ‘Attribute and value conscious’, ‘Variety puzzled’ and ‘Consistent and trustworthy consumers’. Thus, it supports our hypothesis that adolescents’ decision-making styles are different from the adults. Again, we get poor alpha value for ‘Brand and value conscious’ and ‘Imprudent and thoughtless’ traits. This suggested that these traits probably exist in adolescents, but the items for measurement needs to be further explored.

Table 2.

Different forms of Decision-making styles

A. Desirable decision-making styles

High-quality conscious: Consumers who search carefully and systematically for the best quality in products. Often, they are not satisfied with the good-enough products.

Price-conscious: Consumers, who are particularly conscious of sale prices and lower prices in general and, more importantly, are concerned with getting the best value for their money. These consumers are likely to be comparison shoppers.

B. Undesirable decision-making styles

Impulsive Consumers: who tend to buy on the spur of the moment and to appear unconcerned about how much they spend or about getting best buys.

Confused by over choice: Consumers who perceive too many brands and stores from which to choose and who are likely to experience information overload in the market.

C. Social and hedonistic decision-making styles

Brand-conscious: Consumers who are oriented towards buying the more expensive, well-known national brands, believing that a higher price means better quality. They also prefer best-selling, advertised brands.

Novelty/fashion-conscious: Consumers who like new and innovative products and gain excitement from seeking out new things. Keeping up to date with styles and variety seeking are important aspects of novelty and fashion conscious Consumers.

Recreational: Consumers who view shopping as recreation and entertainment. These consumers find shopping a pleasant activity and shop just for the fun of it.

Habitual, brand-loyal: Consumers who have favourite brands and stores and have formed habits in choosing these repetitively

Source: Kamaruddin & Mokhils, 2003 and Authors' own finding from literature review.

Table 3.

Results of factor analysis

Rotated Component Matrix^a
	Component
	1	2	3	4	5	6
“Shopping is enjoyable activity”	0.744
“Shopping is a Pleasant activity to me”	0.694
“Shopping the store does not waste my time”	0.652
“Fashionable, attractive styling is important to me”	0.631
“Keep wardrobe up-to-date with the changing fashion”	0.625
“Have one or more outfits of the very new style”	0.6
“It’s fun to buy something new and exciting”	0.586
“To get variety, I shop different stores and choose different brands”	–0.582
“Special efforts for choosing best quality product”		0.632
“Getting very good quality is important to me”		0.61
“I try to get the very best or perfect choice”		0.587
“Usually try to buy the best overall quality”		0.571
“My standards and expectations for the products are very high”		0.571
“I don’t buy the first product/brand I find good enough”		0.552
“I give my purchases much thought or care”		0.544
“I prefer buying the best selling brands”			–0.791
“The most expensive brands are my choices”			0.752
“The well known national brands are for me”.			–0.73
“The most advertised brands are very good choices”			0.642
“The higher the price of the product, better the quality”			0.56
“So many brands to choose that I feel confused”				0.858
“All the information I get on different products confuses me”				0.767
“The more I learn about products, the harder to choose the best”				0.709
“Once I find a product/ brand I like, I stick with it”					0.783
“I don’t change brands I buy regularly”					0.767
“I go to the same stores each time I shop”					0.763
“I have favourite brands I buy over and over”					0.744
“I don’t carefully watch how much I spend”						0.88
“I am impulsive when purchasing”						–0.508
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

Source: Authors’ own.

The first factor is this factor is ‘Innovative and fun conscious’. It is the combination of ‘the recreational and shopping conscious’ and ‘Novelty and fashion conscious’ decision-making style (eigenvalue: 3.29, Cronbach alpha: 0.608). Thus, the item loading indicates that in Indian cultural context, adolescents enjoy shopping and at the same time they are fashion conscious also. They compare different brands before purchasing anything. The other factor is ‘Attribute and value conscious’. The adolescent under this factor seems to be a high-quality conscious consumer (eigenvalue: 2.36, Cronbach alpha value: 0.716). There are some adolescents who preferred to buy the best-selling brands, that is, the expensive brands are usually their choices. The shoppers under this factor are ‘Brand conscious and price equals quality’ (eigenvalue: 2.449, Cronbach alpha: 0.46). The other factor is ‘Variety puzzled’ consumers (eigenvalue: 1.827, Cronbach alpha: 0.795). Here, the adolescents often feel confused during the purchase process. ‘Consistent and trustworthy consumers’ (eigenvalue: 2.337, Cronbach value: 0.813) are generally brand loyal consumers. In Indian context, we have seen that there are few adolescents who are careless in nature. They are not considered as good shoppers. Such shoppers are unconcerned about how much they spent, but they regret later on thus, this factor can be renamed as ‘Imprudent and thoughtless’ consumers (eigenvalue: 1.032, Cronbach alpha: 0.14). The value of Cronbach alpha is very low, which suggested a future research for the items under this factor. It also gives a partial support for our first hypothesis. Thus, from the above discussion, we found that six out of eight dimensions of the Sproles and Kendall (1986) arerelevant to the Indian adolescents (shown in Table 4). Thus, our first hypothesis H1 (adolescents decision making styles are different from the previous studies on adults) is supported.

Table 4.

Factor description

Factor 1	Innovative and fun conscious	Under this factor, respondents reported that shopping is not a waste of time. Shopping is full of fun-filled, enjoyable and pleasant activity. Adolescents under this factor are more concerned about the fashion and new stuffs.
Factor 2	Attribute and value conscious	They are more concerned about the qualitative products. They have high expectations for the product they buy and aimed to have valuable and qualitative products.
Factor 3	“Brand and value conscious”	The adolescents under this factor are preferred to buy the best selling brands. i.e. the expensive brands are usually their choices. The adolescents under this factor preferred to buy a product which is highly advertised and well-known national brands. There are few adolescents who compare the quality with the price of the product. Thus, brand name, quality and price are all important for the adolescents’ consumer under this factor.
Factor 4	Variety puzzled	Under this factor, the adolescents often feel confused during the purchase process. The more information they gather, they become more confused regarding their choices. Thus, adolescents under this decision styles have difficulty in making choices.
Factor 5	Consistent and trustworthy consumers	Adolescents under this factor are brand loyal consumer, i.e. they stick with their favourite stores and products and have a habit of purchasing it from the same store. They are considered as highly reliable and loyal consumers. Marketers trying to have long-term relationships with such consumers.
Factor 6	Imprudent and thoughtless	Consumers under this factor are careless in nature. They are not considered as good shoppers. Such shoppers are unconcerned about how much they spent, but they regret later on

Source: Authors’ own.

Table 5.

Cluster analysis

Function	Eigenvalue	% of Variance	Cumulative %	Canonical Correlation	Chi-square	Significance
1	1.484	57.645	57.6457	0.773	326.109	0.000
2	1.090	42.354	100	0.722	145.974	0.000

Source: Authors’ own.

Adolescents Decision-making Groups

At the same time, Ward’s method of cluster analysis was performed in order to get different clusters. In the Ward’s method of cluster analysis, 60.9 per cent of the cases were grouped into one cluster, 19.1 per cent are in second cluster, while the rest of the population (20 per cent) was grouped in the third cluster on the basis of above six factor solutions shown in Table 4.

The adolescents in cluster 1 have shown higher percentages for the traits ‘Attributes and value conscious’ and also they are ‘consistent and trustworthy’. The respondents in this group are ‘Variety puzzled’ up to some extent. Hence, this cluster can be named as ‘Loyal and value conscious’ consumers.

The adolescents in cluster 2 have a higher percentage for the traits ‘Brand and value consciousness’ and they are highly ‘variety puzzled’ consumers. But they are not much concerned about the fashion. Hence, they are named as ‘Reluctant perfectionist and brand seeker’.

In cluster 3, nearly 75 per cent have shown their concern that they are ‘Innovative and fun conscious in nature’. The respondents under this cluster are highly ‘Imprudent and thoughtless’ in nature. But respondents under this group sometimes show that they are value conscious in nature also. The consumers under this cluster are not much concerned about their spending and the products they purchased and hence they are considered as imprudent. Hence this group can be named as ‘Thoughtless and Fun conscious’.

Thus, the hypothesis H2 (Adolescents decision-making styles differ within the population and form meaningful clusters) is supported. Hence, empirical results confirm that adolescents’ decision-making styles are quite different from adults and their decision-making traits forms a meaningful cluster (Table 6).

Table 6.

Cluster analysis

Cluster 1 (60.9%)
Agree	Disagree
Special efforts for choosing best quality product	Shopping is a Pleasant activity to me
Getting very good quality is important to me	Fashionable, attractive styling is important to me
I try to get the very best or perfect choice	Keep wardrobe up-to-date with the changing fashion
Usually try to buy the best overall quality	Have one or more outfits of the very new style
My standards and expectations for the products are very high	It’s fun to buy something new and exciting
I don’t buy the first product/brand I find good enough	To get variety, I shop different stores and choose different brands
I give my purchases much thought or care	I don’t carefully watch how much I spend
Once I find a product/ brand I like, I stick with it	I am impulsive when purchasing
I don’t change brands I buy regularly
I go to the same stores each time I shop
I have favourite brands I buy over and over
Cluster 2 (19.1%)
Agree	Disagree
I prefer buying the best selling brands	Special efforts for choosing best quality product
The most expensive brands are my choices	Getting very good quality is important to me
The well known national brands are for me.	I try to get the very best or perfect choice
The most advertised brands are very good choices	Usually try to buy the best overall quality
The higher the price of the product, better the quality	My standards and expectations for the products are very high
So many brands to choose that I feel confused	I don’t buy the first product/brand I find good enough
All the information I get on different products confuses me	I give my purchases much thought or care
The more I learn about products, the harder to choose the best	I don’t carefully watch how much I spend
	I am impulsive when purchasing
Cluster 3 (20%)
Agree	Disagree
Shopping is an enjoyable activity	Special efforts for choosing best quality product
Shopping is a Pleasant activity to me	Getting very good quality is important to me
Shopping the store does not waste my time	I try to get the very best or perfect choice
Fashionable, attractive styling is important to me	Usually try to buy the best overall quality
Keep wardrobe up-to-date with the changing fashion	My standards and expectations for the products are very high
Have one or more outfits of the very new style	I don’t buy the first product/brand I find good enough
It’s fun to buy something new and exciting	I give my purchases much thought or care
To get variety, I shop different stores and choose different brands	So many brands to choose that I feel confused
I don’t carefully watch how much I spend	All the information I get on different products confuses me
I am impulsive when purchasing	The more I learn about products, the harder to choose the best

Source: Authors’ own.

Table 7.

Reliability coefficients

Reliability coefficients for 6 consumer style inventory
Adolescents consumer style inventory	Cronbach alpha for subscales (No. of Items)
Innovative and fun conscious	0.608 (8)
Attribute and value conscious	0.716 (7)
Brand and value conscious	0.46 (5)
Variety puzzled	0.795 (3)
Consistent and trustworthy	0.813 (4)
Imprudent and thoughtless	0.14 (2)

Source: Authors’ own.

Discussion

It is worthwhile to discuss some of the underlying dimensions of these results. There were two principal aims of this study: Adolescents decision-making styles are different from the previous studies on adults, the second one was adolescents decision-making styles differ within the population and form meaningful clusters. The lack of valid and reliable measurement of adolescent’s decision-making style, especially in the Indian context, has impeded the research on this topic. Adolescent decision-making style in the consumer behaviour research is of great interest for the marketers (Bauer, Sauer & Becker, 2006). It is very useful to investigate the adolescent decision-making style so that marketers can segment them into profitable clusters (Lysonski et al., 1996).

We consider that the measurement of this variable is mandatory for accepting adolescent’s behaviour and emotional mechanisms through which decision-making works for adolescents. The consumer behaviour during adolescence period depends on the cultural settings and the social value of the country. The people across the South Asian countries, such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, differ in all respects like their motivation, perception, etc. which they adopted from different generations.

The findings of the study revealed that adolescent consumers are convenience shoppers which confirm the previous research findings (Siu et al., 2001). The affirmation of the ‘Novelty and fashion’ trait as an adolescent decision-making style was quite astonishing and unexpected in light of the facts that adults and young consumers shop for fashion and novelty in different ways (Engels, Scholte, Lieshout, de Kemp & Overbeek, 2006). The study supports our both of the proposed hypotheses that were based on the belief that adolescents’ decision-making styles are quite different from the adults and also they form meaningful clusters on the basis of their decision-making traits. The study rather reflected contemporary India, where the younger generation (adolescents) was trying to emphasize their unique individuality and consumer values/traits/attributes, which were quite different from the adults. Here, the researchers revealed that adolescents tended to have novelty and fashion consciousness, attribute and value consciousness, brand consciousness, variety puzzled, consistent and trustworthy, and the imprudent and thoughtless consumers. It has been seen that during the adolescence period, the adolescents are not price conscious in nature, that is, they are not showing any concern for the price of the product during the purchase decision process. It appears that during the purchase of any product the adolescents are showing much concern for the fashionable and novelty products. They are looking for brands and sometimes consider shopping as a fun activity. The adolescents who have participated in this research resembled the generation Y consumers defined by Bakewell and Mitchell (2003). In the Bakewell and Mitchell’s (2003) study, nearly one-third of the samples were identified as recreational quality seekers. The adolescents in this study were also categorized as quality seeker consumers.

The identification of three decision-making style groups fortifies that CSI can be used as a segmentation tool by the marketers. The results of the cluster analysis also foster our knowledge and conception about the adolescents’ decision behaviour because it provides insights about how different decision-making traits combine to form clusters. In this respect, our research shows that ‘brand and value consciousness’ is being a trait which has been shown by all the adolescents and was found in all the three clusters: ‘Loyal and value conscious’ (42.2 per cent), ‘Reluctant perfectionist and brand seeker’ (94.23 per cent) and ‘Thoughtless and Fun conscious’ (26 per cent). This suggested that almost all the consumers being brand conscious in nature from the period of adolescence. Woodruffe-Burton (1998) revealed that brand helps in enhancing buyers’ self-esteem and therefore it is more important to make an identity.

Over half of the adolescents’ shoppers are also associated with the ‘Consistent and trustworthy’ traits in the two groups ‘Reluctant perfectionist and brand seeker’ (36.57 per cent) and ‘Thoughtless and Fun conscious’ (33.51). This finding contradicts the findings of Campbell (1997) who revealed that adults are generally ineffective shoppers without demanding standards.

Finally, one-third of the adolescents are showing that they are generally ‘Imprudent and thoughtless’ consumers and are also found in other two decision-making groups ‘Loyal and value conscious’ (17.1 per cent) and ‘Reluctant perfectionist and brand seeker’ (8.88 per cent). This finding revealed that adolescents are generally careless consumers.

Conclusion and Managerial Implications

The findings of this study reveal that the adolescent market can be categorized into three different clusters on the basis of their decision-making traits. As the above study has been done in the Indian context, so the validity of this result may be questioned in Western countries. Because in Asian culture especially in India, the adolescents socialized with different socializing agents and they tends to have different decision-making styles. The other Western countries are more versatile in terms of geographical scope, so the generalizability of the results can be questioned.

Few shortcomings of this study highlight the need for future research. The convenience sampling was used, which implies that the data used may not be representing the whole population. Again, in this study, CSI was used as a clustering tool, but the other variables has been ignored like gender, adolescents’ socioeconomic status, family environment, product categories. So in the future, the clustering of the market can be done by including the above-mentioned factors. Also one of the factors ‘Imprudent and thoughtless’ has very less alpha value, so items for measurement needs to be further explored.

It has been seen that adolescents are playing a substantial role in the family decision-making. Adolescents are one of the most influential sources for shaping the relationships among the family members. They are not only influencing the parental decision but also the future market. As far as the household purchases are concerned, disagreement and arguments may take place during such practices. So in the future, what decision-making trait is used by adolescents during the family decision-process can be explored?

The results of this empirical investigation have few consequences, which would be very valuable for the managers. The primary and the foremost implication of this study is the existence of three inter-market segments among the adolescents. These inter-market segments will help the marketers. Whatever promotional/advertising strategies are made for products anticipated to adolescents’ use must express their clustering variable traits. The research on adolescents gives an opportunity to the marketers to make their strategies and advertisements to attract the adolescents. In the coming years, the adolescents would constitute the major markets. The clusters which were found in this research would appear to be unique and large enough in sizes which are a prerequisite of the successful segmentation. And thus it warrants the marketers and the marketing managers to develop unique programme and strategies for each segment. The prior researches which were done so far based on the clustering of the youths, while the clustering of the adolescent market on the basis of their decision-making trait is quite novel in its approach. The clustering of market into different segment will lead to multiple benefits for the marketers such as it would be cost-effective as it reduces the duplication of efforts being made by marketers in similar market segments. It provides opportunities for the marketers to have market expansion of their products and have more effective brand management decisions. This study will provide a foundation to the marketers who are interested in profiling the adolescents’ decision-making styles and hence enable them to make their marketing efforts accordingly.

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