EVALUATION OF THE CONSUMER STYLE INVENTORY (CSI) SCALE IN THE BRAZILIAN CONTEXT

ABSTRACT The objective of this study is the evaluation, in the Brazilian context, of the Consumer Style Inventory (CSI), developed by Sproles e Kendall (1986), which investigates the consumers’ decision-making styles. The present research focuses on young people, since few studies investigated the decision-making process of this population, despite the impact of the experiences lived in the adolescence on the individuals’ adult behavior and the fact that the adolescents are more responsible for their consumption decisions and have more influence on the familiar decisions than ever before. By a survey with 464 adolescents, the scale was evaluated, refined and validated. First of all, we assess the content validity. Then, the sample was divided randomly in two: the first part served to purify the measures and the second one, to validate the measurement model. Overall, the results indicate a factorial structure similar to the initial study and the reliability and validity of the CSI scale on the Brazilian context, with some changes - one item of each of the following styles: guided by the fashion, by the brand, and hedonism; and two items of the impulsive style had weak differentiation among the factors, weak identification with their respective styles or, still, indicated significant improvement in the goodness-of-fit indices of the measurement model by being removed, justifying their exclusion.