Consumer Decision Making

Abstract

In the consumer behaviour literature several perspectives on consumer decision making have been considered, including the 'value perspective', the 'information processing perspective', the 'emotional perspective', and 'cue utilization theory'. In this paper, a framework which integrates several perspectives on consumer decision making and which hypothesizes possible links between several basic constructs is developed. The framework is tested by the use of two experimental designs. The results of this study support the complexity of consumer decision making: (A) Consumers do not use their cognitive and affective skills independently, rather they affect each other; (B) the cognitive, evaluative constructs of quality and attitude had significant direct effects on buying intention in both experiments, whereas the affective construct of emotion had no significant effects on buying intention in both experiments; (C) price affected in both experiments perceived quality, which in turn affected attitude, which in turn affected buying intention. At the same time, price had no direct effect on buying intention.