Analyses of consumer behavior in economics have much developed theoletically and empirically in recent years, but empirical studies have shown us that we need a theoretical framework with which we can treat systematically sociological and socio-psychological factors affecting consumer behavior. Our study is the first step to develop a sociological theory of consumer behavior.
We started with the ideas that consummer behavior of families could be regarded as decision-making processes in which families select a certain pattern of consumption from various alternatives, and that figures of each family given by The Family Income and Expenditure Survey by The Office of Prime Minister could be regarded as the results of these decision-making processes. Our main steps of analysis was, therefore, that, firstly, we regarded the decision-making process as a black-box, and, secondly, we interred the content of the black-box with the data given by the Survey. But in this case we needed a technique of multi-factor analysis because the black-box was consisted of various quantitive and qualitative factors, and we used Hayashi's qualification theory with which we could treat two kinds of factors simultaneously.
We decided nine outside standards, such as living, food, housing, clothing expenditure etc., to be explained, and ten explaining factors, such as income, occupation, industry, age, number of family members, etc.
The following are main outcomes of our factor analysis.
(1) When we take up absolute amount of monetary spending as outside standards, income explains a large part of the variation both at a gross level (a total amount of spending or saving) and at a detailed level. In case of housing or durable goods, however, income does not explain the variation so sufficiently as in other items, and it is noted the fact that a considerable part of the variation of food expenditure is explained by the number of family members, and that of residual expenditure occupation.
(2) When we take up spending ratio as outside standards, the explaining force of income is relatively weak, and three sociological factors, i.e. occupation, number of family members, age, are influential to a certain degree, adding to income. So we can call them tentatively the four deciding factors in consumer behavior.
(3) Next, we analyzed how each category in the four deciding factors affected consumption decision for each item. Concerning income factor, we reaffirmed a lot of findings given by econimists. The analysis about occupation factor, the most important sociological variable, showed us an interesting fact, that the propensity to consume of executives of corporations and white collar workers is higher than that of merchants'craftsmen and self-employed group. These two groups have also a clearly different pattern of choice at a detailed level.
Of couse, our study does not completely suffice us, but we believe that we could understand, at least, part of the content of a black box, in which families with various attributes selected a certain pattern of consumption.
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