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Harmonizing conflict in husband–wife purchase decision making: perceived fairness and spousal influence dynamics

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Abstract

To market important products to families successfully, salespeople must understand how couples behave in concert to resolve conflict across major decisions. The authors develop a model of spousal fairness and test it with a study of multi-period family purchase decision making. The results show that a spousal sense of fairness serves as a mechanism for contemporary couples to harmonize conflict over time in family decisions. Specifically, spouses’ perceived fairness mediates the relationship between spousal prior influence and spousal decision behavior in subsequent decisions. Spouses also consider their partner’s perceptions of fairness when taking action to restore fairness. Moreover, the effects of perceived fairness are moderated by spousal traits of empathy, egalitarianism, and empowerment in a gendered pattern.

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Notes

  1. For simplicity, we focus on husband–wife relationships. The model also can be extended to more complicated decision situations that involve children.

  2. We ran a separate model on the 66 deleted samples and find that perceived unfairness pertaining to a prior decision has no significant effect on spouses’ assertiveness in the subsequent decision (b h = 0.065, p > 0.1; b w = 0.091, p > 0.1). We discuss the implications of these findings in the Limitations and further research section.

  3. Because this study involves measures from two groups (i.e., wives and husbands), we must assess measurement equivalence across these two groups. We test the equality of the variance/covariance of the indicators for each measure across groups. A satisfactory model fit indicates the equivalence of the measure for wives and husbands (Steenkamp and Baumgartner 1998). All final cross-group model tests yield acceptable results (distributive fairness: χ 2(6) = 12.24, p = 0.06; GFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.99, IFI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.06; procedural fairness: χ 2(6) = 2.66, p = 0.85; GFI = 0.99, CFI = 1.00, IFI = 1.00; RMSEA = 0.00; coercive strategy: χ 2(10) = 51.83, p < 0.10; GFI = 0.92, CFI = 0.96, IFI = 0.96; RMSEA = 0.09; non-coercive strategy: χ 2(10) = 11.04, p = 0.36; GFI = 0.98, CFI = 0.99, IFI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.02; empathy: χ 2(10) = 53.04, p < 0.10; GFI = 0.91, CFI = 0.94, IFI = 0.94; RMSEA = 0.09; egalitarianism: χ 2(15) = 53.51, p < 0.01; GFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.95, IFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.07; empowerment: χ 2(6)=30.13, p < 0.01; GFI = 0.93, CFI = 0.97, IFI = 0.97; RMSEA = 0.08). These results show that the measures are invariant for the wife and husband samples

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Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge constructive comments and suggestions from Professor David W. Stewart, the Editor, and four anonymous reviewers. This project has been supported by a research grant (#9030957) from City University of Hong Kong.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Chenting Su, Nan Zhou & Julie Juan Li

  2. Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Chenting Su

  3. School of Business, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

    Kevin Zheng Zhou

  4. Department of Marketing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Nan Zhou

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  1. Chenting Su
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Correspondence to Chenting Su.

Appendix: Measurement Items and Validity Assessment

Appendix: Measurement Items and Validity Assessment

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Su, C., Zhou, K.Z., Zhou, N. et al. Harmonizing conflict in husband–wife purchase decision making: perceived fairness and spousal influence dynamics. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 36, 378–394 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-007-0079-4

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