Household decision behavior: the impact of husbands’ and wives’ sex role orientation

This study examines the impact of sex role orientation on the outcome of a family home purchase decision. A relatively strong relationship is found between sex role orientation (SRO) and the degree of household influence, preference agreement. mode of conflict resolution, and decision outcome. Finally, it is found that household decision behavior is better explained in the context of a theoretical network of systemic household relationships rather than through a series of bivariate family relationships. R esearchers have long held that it is the household that is the relevant unit of analysis, and not the individual consumer (cf. Davis 1976; Granbois 1971). Given that the number of family household units is significantly greater than the number of single house-holds, research in the area of family decision making (FDM) is important in advancing our knowledge of consumer behavior. Yet household decision behavior is generally conceded by consumer behavior theorists to be underresearched, and in need of more theoretical development. A major concern of previous research on household decision behavior has been the failure to ad-dress FDM as a process (Davis 1976). Over the course of FDM research, researchers have used theoretical constructs drawn from economics (Becker 1976), com-munications (Granbois 1963), family dynamics (Bloo