Segmenting Markets Based on Consumer Decision Making Style: An Exploratory Study from India

The study attempts to segment consumers on the basis of their decision making styles. Based on consumer style inventory (CSI), nine unique consumer shopping orientations were identified. Subsequently, these shopping orientations were used to identify unique consumer segments, for which cluster analysis was performed. Relative importance of particular factors within a cluster was also analyzed. For each of these five segments demographic profiling was done to analyze dominance of a particular socio-economic section, with regard to specific style orientation. This would enable marketers to easily identify the qualifiers which would motivate particular type of customers to buy specific product categories.