American versus Japanese Consumer Decision Making

An exploratory study of the way consumers describe their decision-making processes seeks to identify distinctive verbal patterns that vary by cultural background. Transcipts from 28 American and 24 Japanese discussion groups were analyzed through a content analysis to discover if the need recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase, and postpurchase stages are influenced by where people are socialized into their consumer role. The findings show that the American consumers acknowledge more emotional influences on their decision making, while the Japanese consumers prefer rational and cognitive explanations.