Validation of Consumer Styles Inventory for consumerdecision makingstyles

Abstract

The Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI) developed by Sproles and Kendall,Journal of Consumer Affairs, 1986, 20: 267-279, is one of the most widely used instruments to classify consumers by their decision making styles. With changes in consumption culture attributable to the coexistence of global and local consumer culture in the past few decades, it is essential to reaffirm that the CSI measurement instrument is valid for contemporary consumers and can be applied in various contexts. This study, therefore, aimed to present a set of CSI validation procedures using contemporaneous participants and targeting two groups of participants in the United States. Two sets of exploratory factor analysis using the main data set (n= 390) were performed and confirmatory factor analysis was applied to the main data set and the cross-validation data set (n= 172). Results from both the exploratory factor and confirmatory factor analyses seem to validate the eight underlying consumer characteristics of CSI.