Ownership patterns for durable goods and financial assets: a Rasch analysis

There has been considerable discussion about the way in which consumers purchase durable and financial products and a number of modelling procedures have been used to examine this issue. The present paper outlines a study that used a new and more general scaling approach (the Rasch model) for this purpose, using a larger than usual set of durable goods, as well as a set of financial products. It was found that both sets of products could be analysed using the Rasch model and that there was an inherent order in the data. Further, respondents in the sample followed the same order, suggesting that examining subgroups, as has been done in the past, would be of little use. A set of respondents' backgroundcharacteristics was also collected that measured people's ability and willingness to purchase. It was found that high levels of ownership were related to people's ability to purchase rather than to their willingness to purchase. This suggests that the macro, rather than the micro, environment is likely to be the key to sales for both categories of products.