Abstract

The learning processes that every consumer goes through would be the determining factors to the decisions a consumer makes when one is purchasing a product or paying for a service. Consumer educators and those involved with consumer interest studies in general consider the above statement as extremely obvious even though one might assume that consumers’ learning and decision-making are a related phenomenon. In essence, such relationship has not been systematically explored in consumer research (Sproles & Sproles, 1990). As the number of product increases and the variety of goods available in the stores and shopping malls multiplies, this helps to broaden-up consumer choices. Similarly, with the availability of multi-component products and electronic purchasing capabilities not only it has broadened the sphere of consumer choice, it also adds complication in making a purchase decision. Based on the examination of the types of consumer decision-making styles in the literature, an instrument was developed to measure the “general orientations toward shopping and buying” and samples from undergraduate students from several universities in the northern region of West Malaysia were used.

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