Profiling Customers Based on Their Social Risk Perception: A Cluster Analysis Approach

Mandeep Kaur Ghuman and Bikram Jit Singh Mann

Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research, 2018, vol. 17, issue 1, 41-52

Abstract: Past research asserts that social risk is an important determinant of consumer purchase behaviour; however, the characteristics of consumers who perceive high/low social risk in a purchase decision have been largely neglected. This study examines consumer social risk perception from a sample of Indian consumers of automobiles. The study segments the consumers using a cluster analysis, and explores differences between clusters based on consumers’ social risk perception and their psychological, cultural, and socio-demographic variables. Need for cognition (NFC) and risk-taking tendency are the two psychological variables focused in the study. The three cultural dimensions considered include collectivism, power distance, and masculinity. The cluster analysis yielded three clusters: high social risk perceivers, medium social risk perceivers, and low social risk perceivers. High social risk perceivers are found to be the individuals with high NFC, low risk-taking tendency, high collectivism, low power distance, and high masculinity. Medium social risk perceivers are the individuals with medium level of NFC, risk taking tendency and collectivism, and are low on power distance and masculinity. Low social risk perceivers are the consumers low in NFC, high in risk-taking tendency, low on collectivism, high on power distance, and low on masculinity. Further, each cluster was cross tabulated with consumer demographics.

Keywords: Social risk perception; need for cognition; risk-taking tendency; culture; cluster analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0972622518768679 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:metjou:v:17:y:2018:i:1:p:41-52

DOI: 10.1177/0972622518768679

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().