Abstract
Little is known about whether and how, male and female consumers, who are different in biological, social and psychological aspects, as an individual, behave differently in buying decision making process. Thus, this dissertation attempts to find out gender difference during the purchase decision making process by examining college students' purchasing behavior of mobile phones. Two general hypotheses are proposed. Hypothesis one suggests that females and males go through the same purchase process, but behave differently in various stages of the process. Hypothesis two proposes that for decision making process, the cognitive-rational paradigm will be more dominant for male than for female, whereas the hedonic paradigm will be more dominant for female than for male. The hypotheses are tested by a quantitative research approach. There were some significant differences found in female and male' s behavior during decision making process at the stages of problem recognition, information search and evaluation of alternatives. Females consistently scored higher than males on all scales of hedonic needs except the need of achievement. Males scored higher on utilitarian need. Females used more sources than males while searching for information. More females took family and friends as prime source and more males used the Internet for searching information of mobile phones. Females showed higher mood-related concerns than males. These findings supported hypotheses. Males were more concerned with price than females. Females showed higher concern with quality of mobile phones. However, some similarities also existed at the above stages and obvious similarities exist at the stages of purchase and postpurchase. Males and females showed similar degree of conformity, although they comply with different influencers. They showed similar degree of postpurchase satisfaction and that stemmed mostly from utilitarian attributes of mobile phone. Males were found to be a less emotional or symbolic buyer than females at the problem recognition stage, and females were found as rational as males while evaluating alternatives and appraising postpurchase satisfaction. Females were not dominated by hedonic paradigm, however, compared with males, they exhibited higher hedonic needs and their evaluation of alternatives were more likely affected by emotional attributes.