Fuzzy analysis of older adult consumer attitudes and decision-making styles: socioeconomic differences in fuzziness

The purpose of the present study was to explore applications of fuzzy set theory to the measurement of consumer purchasing attitudes and consumer decision-making style preferences in three groups of older adults. The question of interest was: what information can the analysis of fuzziness index provide that an analysis of traditional Likert-type scale raw score does not provide? The original study and results of the raw score analysis are described. The raw score results are compared with analyses of fuzziness index derived from raw scores. Finally, a comparison of analyses of mean fuzziness index with analyses of the standard deviation of fuzziness index is made.<>