Influence of consumer decision-making styles on use of mobile shopping applications

The purpose of this paper is to validate the consumer styles inventory (CSI) scale for understanding the decision-making styles of shopping app users. The validated scales are used to examine the relationship between consumers’ decision-making styles and factors affecting the use of mobile shopping apps.

A total of 428 valid responses are collected from the users of the five most popular shopping apps. The mobile shopping apps are selected based on a popularity study. Data are collected from mobile app shoppers through an online survey.

Findings reveal a new set of factors that can be used for understanding use of mobile shopping apps. Decision-making styles influence the adoption of mobile apps for shopping. Factors responsible for the adoption of mobile shopping apps such as usefulness and risk perceptions differ across consumers with different decision-making styles.

The findings would facilitate online retailers in building focused marketing strategies for segmenting and targeting the consumers having different decision-making styles.

The current research is the first of its kind to examine the applicability of the CSI scale in the context of mobile app shoppers in an emerging economy. The findings enrich the existing literature by providing empirical support to the relationship between decision-making styles and factors affecting adoption of shopping using mobile apps.