Adaptação do consumers style inventory: estudo exploratório com consumidores portugueses

The interest in the markets and how individuals behave as consumers of products and services has increased. Consumer Psychology tries to understand the motives of individuals or groups involved in consumer activities and how these affect them. It focuses on cognitive processes and behaviors that occurs when individuals purchase or use products and services. Being an interdisciplinary field, it combines theories and methods of research areas such as Psychology, Marketing, Advertising, Economics, Sociology and Anthropology. Since consumer behavior and decisionmaking styles play a key role, they have gained status in scientific research and are analyzed by instruments such as the Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI, de Sproles & Kendall, 1986). The instrument assesses eight consumer decision styles: Perfectionism, High-Quality Conscious Consumer; Brand Conscious, “Price Equals Quality” Consumer; Novelty-Fashion Conscious Consumer; Recreational, Hedonistic Consumer; Price Conscious, “Value for Money” Consumer; Impulsive, Careless Consumer; Confused by Overchoice Consumer; Habitual, Brand-Loyal Consumer. This study describes the adaptation of Consumer Styles Inventory in the Portuguese context, based on a sample of 229 participants aged 16 to 79 years. The data confirmed six of the eight factors proposed by the original study, explaining 57% of the variance and the results suggest that this instrument can be useful to the Portuguese context.