Applicability of analysis techniques to determine consumer behaviour

Summary

To explain consumers’ actual buying behaviour, a choice experiment and a standardised interview shall be combined in a twofold methodological approach. While the choice experiment provides information about consumers’ buying behaviour, the interview shall examine backgrounds and reasons for the choice decision by investigating the internal factors consisting of consumer attitudes, motivations and emotions, as well as the external factors, which are socio-demographic characteristics. The data provided by this twofold methodological approach need to be linked in the analysis procedure. Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss the applicability of single multivariate analysis techniques and their ability to explain consumer behaviour. To identify causalities between the observed behaviour and factors influencing the buying behaviour, two successive techniques are favoured. To reduce the large set of variables collected in the interview, a factor analysis is suggested. To link the variables of experiment and interview, both multiple regression analysis and ANOVA are applicable to explain causalities. Multiple regression analysis is suggested as it is more flexible towards the measurement level of the independent variable if only a small number of non-metric variables have to be transformed into dummy variables.