Spousal roles in family purchase decision making process

Abstract

The major objectives of marketers are to identify the purchase decision makers. Marketers are interested to know how decisions about purchase are formed and who exactly influence it. What role spouses plays in Family Purchase Decision Making Process? Previous researchers focuses on family as a unit as for as the Family Purchase Decision Making Process is concerned. Family works as a mentor as for the spouse because basic social values and social behaviour is taught as a collective measure by it. That s why marketers generally aim at spouse who seek support in the task of socialization. Behaviour of spouse is multidimensional in nature, because it depends upon size of the family unit, age gap between the spouse, their social background of spouse, their working status, the risk associated with a particular purchase decision and above all the mindset of the family towards the traditional role of the women. So purchase decision making behaviour with a family becomes a complete task of analytical purpose. newlineSpousal decision making is probably unique among research areas of social sciences that reveals that several discipline contributed to its development including rural sociology, social anthropology, social psychology, clinical psychology, marketing and economics. This interest of diverse disciplines in spousal decision making is largely due to the fact that the whole social structure in the world rests on the consumption maintenance and survival of the family unit. The present study has been initiated with the objective to know the effect of gender role on buying behaviour and redefining the role of gender. The main objectives of the study are to analyze the changing nature of the spousal roles in family purchase decisions, and the impact of socio- cultural shifts in the family purchase decision making process. This research also helps to analyze the change in spousal roles in dual income families and to identify the shifts in authoritative / hierarchical positions in spousal roles with reference to purchase