An investigation of the family purchase decision making process
Abstract
The study contained in this report investigated
the relative influence of family members in making
family purchase decisions.
The husbands and wives were asked to rate their
own influence on seven point semantic differential
scale.
After the data was collected, mean scores and
proportions were computed and graphed .for comparison
purposes. Further statistical analyses were also
carried out using the spear mans rank correlation
coefficient and' the t-test for paired observations.
The findings from these analyses led the researcher
to make the following conclusions:-
(1) For the lower income families, the wives were found
to dominate non durable domestic products, while
the husbands were found to dominate investment
products. The durable domestic products and the
social/educational/health products were in the
shared influence region.
(2) In middle income families wives were found to
dominate decisions over non durable domestic
products while all other categories of products
showed shared influence. Husbands were not shown
to dominate any of the four product categories .
.(3) In the upper income families husbands were found
to dominate decisions on durable domestic products
while wives dominated non durable domestic products.
The investment products and the educational/social/
health products fell in the shared influence
category.
(4) The findings from: the statistical analyses showed
that the mean scores attained by husbands and wives
were not independent of each other and that for all
the income classes and all the product categories
the mean scores were not statistically different.
(5) For all the three income classes, the general
feeling of the parents was that the children mainly
played the roles of initiators and information
gatherers with children in their teenage (13-l9yrs.)
being the most influential.
Citation
Masters Of Business And Administration, Of The University Of Nairobi,1989Publisher
University of Nairobi, school of business,