The impacts of individualism/collectivism on consumer decision-making styles : the case of Finnish and Vietnamese mobile phone buyers

Abstract

This thesis aims to study the differences of individualism-oriented mobile phone consumers and collectivism-oriented mobile phone consumers in making buying decisions. Finland and Vietnam are the subjective nations of this research, in which Vietnamese mobile phone buyers represent collectivist consumers and Finnish mobile phone buyers represent individualist consumers. The study is based on Hofstede’s theory of individualism/collectivism and its influences on mobile phone buyers in Vietnam and Finland. Sproles & Kendall’s framework of Consumer Styles Inventory is applied as the main research technique, assisting the author in hypothesis development and questionnaire design. The questionnaire included 13 questions and was sent to Vietnamese and Finnish respondents for duration of 2 weeks. 70 responses were collected from each nation. SPSS software was employed for data analysis. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted to test the reliability and correlations of the dataset. Research findings confirmed that Vietnamese and Finnish mobile phone buyers’ decision-making styles greatly differ in terms of recreational, hedonistic shopping consciousness and confusion from over choice, with Vietnamese mobile phone buyers obtaining outstandingly higher scores. The results also revealed moderate differences between Vietnamese and Finnish mobile phone consumers on the following factors: impulsiveness and high-quality consciousness. The decision-making styles of Vietnamese and Finnish mobile phone buyers showed small differences on brand consciousness, price consciousness and habitual, brand-loyal orientation. Finnish and Vietnamese mobile phone consumers got the same score for the factor of novelty-fashion consciousness. Based on the research results, useful suggestions for mobile phone producers and consumer-interest researchers in their future studies were given.