Measurement of Relation between Consumer Decision Making Styles and Voluntary Simplicity Life Style

Consumer decision making style is defined as the cognitive tendency which characterizes the decision making attitude of the consumer. Consumer styles inventory contains the following dimensions:1. Perfectionism-high quality orientation,2. Brand orientation,3. Novelty-fashion orientation,4. Entertainment-pleasure orientation,5. Price-value orientation,6. Shopping without thinking-planlessness,7. Experiencing variety confusion,8. Habit-brand loyalty orientation (Sproles & Kendall 1986).Voluntary simplicity is avoiding to have an existence that is not in accordance with the main purpose of life and wasting energy (Elgin and Mitchell, 1993). There are 5 main values of voluntary simplicity;1. Physical simplicity (the behaviors against consumption),2. Self identification (the desire of having more control over their life for individual future),3. Ecological sensitiveness (being aware of the mutual dependency between resources and people),4. Humane scale (the desire of smaller institutions and technology),5. Individual development (the desire of exploring and improving the inner world),The goal of this study is to measure if there is a relation between consumer decision making styles and voluntary simplicity life style and the severity and direction of this relation. After the literature review it was seen that there are no studies that measures the relation to consumer decision making styles and voluntary simplicity lifestyle. Therefore this study has an importance in terms of contributing to the literature. This research was conducted by using survey method on the applicants who were determined with convenience sampling method. Number of the valid surveys collected is 275.According to the results of the analysis it was seen that perfectionist-high quality orientation, price-value orientation and avoiding shopping decision making styles have a positive relation with voluntary simplicity lifestyle. On the other hand it was seen that, the other four dimensions of consumer decision making styles, which are novelty-fashion orientation, habit-brand loyalty orientation, experiencing variety confusion and brand orientation have no relation with consumer decision making styles