Life Stage Model

1452 Words6 Pages

Since different life stages have an influence on the consumer buying behavior it was decided to segregate the respondents into different life-course groups. In the life-course section we followed Settersen Jr’s model (2003) for transitions and used his research on normative structuring of the life-course to help determine the life-stages. In his research Settersen Jr. (2003) offers two different types of life stages: the career-related life stages and family-related life stages. We decided to look into both of them as they could provide different perspectives and uncover relevant connections and relations to the motivations and moderating factors. Career-related Life-stages Using Settersen Jr’s research (2003) of life-course transitions …show more content…

These are the stages of being unmarried, living together as common-law or married, parenthood, empty nesters and grandparents. To further explain, in the life-cycle of being unmarried, this is when an adult has moved out from home the first time, but not yet moved in with a partner. Once a respondents lives with a significant other, but do not have children they are living together as common-law or married. However, once consumers has children living at home they are in the parenthood life-cycle. This course could actually be further specified into more life-stages by for example age of the children, or a question if it is a two-parent household or only one (Hawks & Ackerman, 1990) but for the sake of this study, this was not done. On the otherhand, empty nesters are those where a parent has had children, but the child(ren) do not live at home anymore and neither do the children have any children on their own. Finally, a consumer can also be a grandparents where they have …show more content…

90). In 1999, Dholakia, confirmed that gender has a strong effect on clothing shopping and that women shop more often than men (p.160) and that women even play a role in shopping for clothing for men, though it is the men who play the primary role when shopping for their own clothes (p.162). This may be because female shoppers also tend to be more involved in fashion clothing (O’Cross, 2004,