Shifting roles in family decision making

Abstract

While the roles played by husbands and wives have been shown to change over stages of the family decision-making process, a gap exists in the literature with respect to whether and how decision role structure may change over time. To address this gap, a qualitative research study was conducted with urban, middle class couples in India regarding their decision-making processes for a diverse set of product categories. The results indicate that macrolevel environmental trends toward urbanization, westernization, and the desire to "work hard, grow rich" were associated with shifts in the decision role structure over the eight-year period.