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INTRODUCTION
In terms of allocation of household purchase responsibilities, marketers traditionally have classified goods as husband-dominant, wife-dominant and joint. According to this taxonomy, husbands have primary authority over goods and services that ensure the family's financial wellbeing or that relate to males' customary maintenance tasks. Wives have primary responsibility for goods and services that are needed to sustain the day-to-day operation of the home or that are associated with care of children. And husbands and wives act together to contribute their knowledge and skills to the acquisition of goods and services that touch on areas of mutual interest and authority.
This standard allocation of spousal purchase responsibility paralleled a broader division of work roles in industrial societies, where the expectation has been for husbands to work outside the home and for wives to focus their efforts on child care and domestic duties This norm seems less relevant to the post-industrial world, however, and perhaps applies only marginally to the American Baby Boom generation. Many women in this generation postponed marriage in order to establish their careers, and even after marriage the majority continued to be employed outside the home. Moreover, Baby Boomers, during their formative years, were likely exposed to the egalitarian gender ideology of the Women's Movement.
ORIGINS OF THE CLASSIFICATION SCHEME
The empirical foundations of the traditional classification of spousal shopping responsibility rests on research that is several decades old. A survey of wives conducted in the Detroit area during the 1950s found that husbands dominated car purchases, wives controlled food budgeting, both partners participated in housing and vacation choices, and either the husband alone or both spouses together made life insurance decisions (Sharp and Mott, 1956). A national survey during that same decade revealed a similar gender-based distribution of household purchase decision making: the male partner had most influence on car choice, the female prevailed in the selection of home appliances and household goods, and both spouses shared responsibility for "seeing to it that some money gets saved" (Wolgast, 1958).
When researchers in the early 1970s examined husband-wife influence on the problem recognition, information search, and final decision phases of customer choice, they found a clear pattern over most of the 25 household products studied. For example, husbands dominated every stage in...