Developing a new lifestyle instrument: an analytic hierarchy process-based approach

For almost as long as lifestyles have been studied in consumer behaviour, methodology has been of interest to researchers. Moreover, the progress in methodological issues is crucial for understanding the relationship between consumer behaviour and lifestyles. Essentially, the present study with the help of academic and marketing experts, rank the respective constructs of two of the most important and widely used scales of measuring consumer lifestyles: the activities, interests and opinions (AIO) and values and lifestyle (VALS). Accordingly, this article attempts to develop a new lifestyle scale with the help of analytic hierarchy process (AHP). AHP is a theory of measurement through pairwise comparisons and relies on the judgements of experts to derive priority scales. It is these scales that measure intangibles in relative terms. The comparisons are made using a scale of absolute judgements that represents, how much more one element dominates another with respect to a given attribute. Altogether, the study is a significant beginning towards assembling a well-defined and more holistic image of factors (new scale development) influencing the lifestyles of Indians. It is a mere building block and a starting point in Indian lifestyle research and would add to the limited body of knowledge in this particular field. The paper also discusses theoretical and managerial implications of the study.