Impact of Consumer Decision-making Styles on Online Apparel Consumption in India

Abstract

The Internet has become a popular channel during the last decade for shopping and is adding value to the retailing world. India’s e-commerce market is also growing in all product categories. Consumer spending at apparel websites is rising, and it is presenting a tough revenue war in this segment, which had traditionally been dominated by physical stores. Previous researchers have applied the consumer style inventory (CSI) by Sproles and Kendall (1986) for assessing the consumer decision-making styles. But there is a paucity of studies on analyzing the impact of CSI on online apparel purchase. Profiling consumer decision-making styles in an online context has importance to marketers, consumer affairs specialists and advertisers to determine the behavioural patterns and is also important for the market segmentation. The present research aims to examine the influence of consumer decision-making styles on the possibility to engage in online shopping of apparels. This study clarifies the relationship between each decision style category and online shopping consumption in Indian context with empirical evidence to enrich the literature.