Consumer Decision Making I:

The Process
What Would a Pet Owner Need to Know in Order to
Make a Decision About Buying Pet Insurance?
Will depend on:
•What they know already
•How important the decision
is
•The attributes being sought in
pet insurance

The basics a pet owner

would question:
•Do I need it?
•How do I get more
information?
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•What kind of coverage am I
2
Publishing as Prentice Hall
seeking?
 Levels of Consumer Decision Making
Routine Response Limited Problem Extensive Problem
Behaviour Solving Solving

Factors that Affect the Type of Decision

Making Process
 Importance of the decision
 Previous experience
 Existence of well-established decision criteria
 Amount of information at hand about each alternative
 The number of alternatives available
 Model of consumption being followed
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 Consumer
Decision
Making
Figure 3

4
Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
 Types of Problems

Active Inactive

Immediate Sol’n Problem Problem

Type 1 Type 2

No immediate Sol’n Problem Problem

Type 3 Type 4

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 Problem Recognition and
Marketing Strategy
 Identify existing consumer problems and find
solutions for these
 Lower the actual state
 Increase the desired state
 Increase the importance of the gap between actual
and desired states
 Convert inactive problems to active problems
 Convert problems into ones requiring an
immediate solution
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 Pre-Purchase Search
 Types of Information Sources
– Personal and Impersonal
 Types of Information Sought
– Brands or alternatives available
– Evaluative criteria to be used
• Generally, product features
– Ratings of brands on evaluative criteria
 Factors Affecting Extent of Information Search
– Product factors
– Situational factors
– Social acceptability
– Consumer factors

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Amount of search when…

 High price?
 Frequent purchase?
 Previous experience was unsatisfactory?
 Buying a gift?
 Purchase is not socially visible?
 Conflicting information is available?
 Users agree on evaluation?
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Copyright © 2006 Pearson Education Canada Inc.
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 Evaluation of Alternatives – Types
of Consumer Choice Processes
 Affective choices
– More holistic; an overall evaluation
– based on how one feels about a purchase
 Attribute-based choices
– Have pre-determined evaluative criteria
– May require both external and internal search
– Complicated decision rules may be used

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 Nature of Evaluative Criteria

 Can be tangible or intangible

 Include surrogate indicators
– Attributes that are used as indicators of another
attribute
 Are often ranked in order of importance

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 Consumer Decision Rules
 Procedures used by consumers to facilitate brand
or other consumption-related choices
 Compensatory
– Brands evaluated in terms of each relevant criteria and
the best brand (or one with the highest score) is chosen
 Non-compensatory
– Positive evaluations do not compensate for negative
evaluations

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 Non-Compensatory Decision Rules
 Conjunctive Disjunctive Decision 
 Lexicographic Decision
Decision Rule Rule Rule
– consumers identify – Product attributes are
– Product attributes identified
are identified product attributes
– establish a – Product attributes are
– a minimally ranked in terms of
acceptable cutoff minimally importance
point is established acceptable cutoff
point for each – brands are compared in
for each attribute terms of the attribute
attribute considered most important
– brands that fall
below the cutoff – accept the brand – Brand that scores highest
point on any one that meets or on the first attribute is
attribute are exceeds the cutoff chosen
eliminated from for any one attribute – If there is a tie, the scores
further on the next attribute are
consideration considered

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 Hypothetical Use of Decision Rules
Table 7
Decision Rule Mental Statement

Compensatory rule I selected the netbook that came out best when I
balanced the good ratings against the bad ratings

Conjunctive rule I selected the netbook that had no bad features

Disjunctive rule I picked the netbook that excelled in at least one

Lexicographic rule
Affect referral rule
attribute
I looked at the feature that was most important to me
and chose the netbook that ranked highest on that
attribute
I bought the brand with the highest overall rating

Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Chapter Fifteen Slide 14
14
In 2006, Tom was shopping for a laptop. In his
information search he discovered consumer ratings of
the following three brands in his evoked set. The most
important criteria to him in choosing his laptop was
display. Consider which laptop he would choose using
the various compensatory and non-compensatory
decision rules discussed in your text. (Assume his cut-
off for an unacceptable attribute is below 6.)

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 Issues in Alternative Evaluation
 Lifestyles as a Consumer Decision Strategy
 Incomplete Information
 Non-comparable Alternatives
 Going online
 Decisions by functionally illiterate consumers
 Series of Decisions
 Consumption Vision
– Mental picture of the consequences of using a
particular product

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Coping with Missing Information

 Delay decision until missing information is

obtained
 Ignore missing information and use
available information
 Change the decision strategy to one that
better accommodates for the missing
information
 Infer the missing information

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 Information Search and
Marketing Strategy
 Get products into consumers’ evoked set
 Limit information search if your brand is
the preferred brand
 Increase information search if your
alternative is not the preferred brand
 Use point-of-purchase advertising
effectively
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 Alternative Evaluation and
Marketing Strategy
 Identify decision rule used by target market and
use suitable promotional messages
 Influence the choice of evaluative criteria
 Influence the rating of your product on evaluative
criteria used
 Use surrogate indicators effectively
 Use ‘consumption vision’

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