Consumer innovativeness and shopping styles Ji Eun Park Nance College of Business Administration, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA Jun Yu and Joyce Xin Zhou School of Business, Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas, USA Abstract Purpose ��� Innovative consumers are an important market segment. This paper seeks to investigate whether consumers��� innate innovativeness is associated with their shopping styles. Specifically, it aims to explore the relationship between two types of innovativeness ��� sensory and cognitive ��� and consumer shopping styles. Design/methodology/approach ��� The paper integrates the consumer innovativeness and consumer shopping styles literature. It is built on the premise that if consumer innovativeness is regarded as a general personality trait, then it would also be reflected in consumers��� shopping approaches. A structural equation model is used to test the relationship between cognitive and sensory innovativeness and various shopping styles. Findings ��� Sensory innovativeness and cognitive innovativeness can lead to different shopping styles. Cognitive innovators are inclined to show shopping styles such as quality consciousness, price consciousness, and confusion by overchoice. On the other hand, sensory innovators are inclined to have shopping styles such as brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, recreational orientation, impulsive shopping, and brand loyalty/habitual shopping. Research limitations/implications ��� The research is based on a convenience sample of young consumers in a particular country ��� China. Generalizability of the results would depend on future research conducted in other cultures and consumers of other age groups. Practical implications ��� The findings of this research help managers to develop a deeper insight into product development and marketing. Product form can be designed to appeal to the two different types of innovative consumers ��� cognitive innovators and sensory innovators. Marketing communication and brand management should be based on the shopping styles of these different types of innovative consumers. Furthermore, since the youth market in China represents an enormous opportunity for marketers, the paper provides valuable insights into this key market segment in one of the most important markets in the world. Originality/value ��� The paper is the first step in exploring the relationship between consumer innovativeness and consumer shopping styles. It provides new insights into the shopping patterns of consumers who belong to different innovativeness types. In addition, it also makes a new contribution to the shopping styles literature by exploring potential antecedents to the various shopping styles. Keywords Consumer behaviour, Innovation, Shopping, Decision making, China Paper type Research paper An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article. Introduction Consumer innovativeness is often viewed as a personality trait reflecting a willingness to change (Hurt et al., 1977). Innovative consumers are an important market segment for marketers. Revenue from new products adopted by innovative consumers plays a pivotal role for many firms (Cowart et al., 2008). Successful launching and marketing new products aimed at innovative consumers, therefore, is critical for these firms. A good understanding of decision-making styles of innovative consumers is imperative for these marketing activities. Consumer decision-making styles are the mental characteristic way that a consumer approaches the purchase and consumption experience (Sproles and Kendall, 1986). They could help consumer behavior researchers gain a deeper understanding of consumers��� shopping behavior and assist marketing managers in approaching consumers more efficiently by targeting specific consumer clusters or segments (e.g., Lysonski et al., 1996). Recognizing the weakness of viewing innovativeness as a single trait in explaining consumers��� innovative behavior (Hirunyawipada and Paswan, 2006), recent research has attempted to differentiate different aspects of innovativeness. A particular study that has increasingly received attention is the differentiation between cognitive and sensory innovativeness made by Venkatraman and Price (1990). Cognitive (sensory) innovativeness is the preference for engaging in new experiences with the objective of stimulating the mind (senses). Although researchers have showed interest in such a differentiation (e.g., Im et al., 2007), there is little empirical research on shopping patterns of consumers who belong to these two innovativeness types. A rare example is a study by Hirunyawipada and Paswan (2006), who investigated high-tech product adoption behavior using the cognitive and sensory innovativeness constructs. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0736-3761.htm Journal of Consumer Marketing 27/5 (2010) 437���446 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0736-3761] [DOI 10.1108/07363761011063330] 437

As will be discussed in more detail later in this paper, understanding potential differences in shopping styles between these two types of innovative consumers would be an important part of successful marketing strategy when innovative consumers are the primary target segment. Thus, the main goal of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of the potential differences in shopping styles of these two different types of innovative consumers. The Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) developed by Sproles and Kendall (1986) has been the most tested instrument currently available to measure decision-making styles. Many studies of CSI have focused on replications of the Sproles and Kendall (1986) study in various countries such as New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, China, etc. However, few studies attempt to explore the antecedents and consequences of CSI styles (Wesley et al., 2006). Another goal of this study is therefore to bring more clarity to the understanding of consumer decision-making styles by examining its additional antecedent, specifically the impact of consumer innovativeness (Hirschman, 1980). Testing the relationship between CSI and consumer innate innovativeness could provide rich information that facilitates the understanding of consumers��� motivation in their consumption choice as well as profiling different consumer segments. The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows. First, we review the constructs of interest ��� CSI and consumer innovativeness, and then discuss the theoretical relationships among the constructs in order to develop hypotheses. Then the research method and sources of data are described, and the results, implication, and limitation follow. Consumer decision-making styles in shopping The literature of consumer decision-making styles has a long history in marketing and consumer behavior research. The literature suggests that consumer decision-making styles in shopping can be characterized in a three-dimensional pattern (Sproles and Kendall, 1986): the lifestyle approach (Gehrt and Carter, 1992) the psychological (attribute) approach (Sproles and Kendall, 1986) and the typology (general consumer types) approach (Westbrook and Black, 1985). While these studies are successful in generating knowledge of the shopping orientations of consumers, distinctions between three approaches appear to have brought diverse findings because of different bases for conceptualizing and operationalizing shopping orientations. Sproles and Kendall (1986) combined these and additional traits to develop a consumer decision-making styles (CDMS) list, the so-called CSI. This is an early attempt to systematically measure shopping orientations. Sproles and Kendall (1986, p. 79) define CSI as: A consumer decision-making style is defined as a patterned, mental, cognitive orientation towards shopping and purchasing, which constantly dominates the consumer���s choice. [. . .] these traits are ever-present, predictable, central driving forces in decision-making. In essence we are speaking of a relatively enduring consumer personality, analogous to the more general concept of human personality in psychology. CSI styles are thinking styles that are preferred ways of using the abilities and they are enduring over years or even decades and stable across different decision contexts. Thus, it is not product category specific. The CSI categorizes decision- making styles of shoppers into eight categories: perfectionism/ quality consciousness, price and value consciousness, confusion due to over-choice, impulsive and careless tendencies, brand consciousness, novelty/fashion consciousness, recreational and hedonistic orientation, and brand loyalty or habitual shopping. These shopping styles will be discussed in more detail in the hypothesis development section. These eight styles describe the most basic mental characteristics of a consumer���s decision making and each independently represents important mental approaches to consumption (Sproles and Kendall, 1986). They also focus on cognitive and affective orientations such as quality consciousness and fashion consciousness. Such knowledge is essential in identifying segments of consumers sharing similar attitudes to shopping (Lysonski et al., 1996). The CSI has been tested and validated in international settings including South Korea (Hafstrom et al., 1992), New Zealand (Durvasula et al., 1993), and China (Siu et al. 2001 Fan and Xiao, 1998) for segmenting consumers in these regions. This brief review of consumer decision-making styles highlights a research gap in that studies about antecedents of the CSI are rare (Wesley et al. (2006) is an exception to this observation). Consumer innovativeness Extant literature has defined consumer innovativeness in several ways. Most researchers in consumer innovativeness have investigated commonality of early adopters. For example, consumer innovativeness is considered as the tendency to willingly embrace change and try new things (Cotte and Wood, 2004), the degree to which an individual is relatively earlier in adopting an innovation than others (Rogers and Shoemaker, 1971), and buying new products more often and more quickly than others (Roehrich, 2004). Other researchers have examined innovativeness as a personality construct. For example, Midgley and Dowling (1978) identified consumer innovativeness as the latent personality trait underlying preference for new and different experiences. Owing to inconsistent findings in the literature of consumer innovativeness, a hierarchical perspective of consumer innovativeness is proposed by Hirunyawipada and Paswan (2006): global (personal trait) domain-specific (narrowly defined trait toward products category) and innovative behavior. Global innovativeness, which is a construct of interest in this paper, is a personality trait at the highest level of abstraction and independent of the domain or product specific category. Although many researchers have theorized global innovativeness trait as a single construct, others suggest it to be multidimensional, including sensory and cognitive traits (i.e. Venkatraman and Price, 1990). Consumers with cognitive innovativeness are motivated to stimulate the mind by searching new experiences or making decisions. Cognitive innovators enjoy thinking, problem solving, puzzling over issues and other mental exertions, and they seek new experiences that stimulate these mental activities. Sensory innovativeness, in contrast, is the preference for new experiences that stimulate the senses. These experiences include internally generated new experiences such as fantasy and daydreaming and externally available new thrilling and adventurous activities (Hirschman, 1984 Zuckerman, 1979). Some innovative people have a preference for either cognitive Consumer innovativeness and shopping styles Ji Eun Park, Jun Yu and Joyce Xin Zhou Journal of Consumer Marketing Volume 27 �� Number 5 �� 2010 �� 437���446 438