Computational Modeling of Uncertainty Avoidance in Consumer Behavior

Human purchasing behavior is affected by many influential factors. Culture at macro-level and personality at microlevel influence consumer purchasing behavior. People of different cultures tend to accept the values of their own group and consequently have different purchasing behavior. Also, people in the same culture have some differences in their purchases which can be described by their personal characteristics. Therefore, this paper studies Uncertainty Avoidance dimension of Hofstede culture model in consumer behavior as well as four personality traits. The consumer model includes three important module including perception, evaluation of the alternatives and post-purchase. Our experimental results show that people of high uncertainty avoidance tend to purchase the high quality products as well as famous brands to reduce the risk of their purchases. On the other hand, people in high uncertainty tolerant culture tend to purchase the new products. The paper discusses about the validity of the proposed model based on empirical data.