Investigating the Decision-Making Styles for Purchasing Sportswear (The Case of Students of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz)

Different people in the society have different purchasing behavior. Marketers are constantly looking for identifying factors affecting customers’ decision-making. The purpose of this research was to investigate decision-making styles for purchasing sportswear. The research method was descriptive and fell under survey category and the data was collected in the field. The statistical population of this research included all the students of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz. Using Morgan’s table and stratified random sampling, the sample size included 375 participants. The instrument for data collection was consumer decision-making style questionnaire (Sproles and Kendall (1986)). Instrument validity was confirmed by 10 experts of sports management and its reliability was approved by Cronbach’s Alpha (0.812). Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and independent samples t-test were used to analyze the data. The results showed that students use seven decision-making styles for purchasing sportswear. Also, the tendency to buy fashion-oriented, quality-oriented and habit-oriented styles among athletic students was higher than that of non-athletic students. The research findings would help sportswear manufacturers and marketers to better understand students community and their shopping styles.