SDSU Strategic Communication for Decision Making Essay

Think about a recent decision you made in which decision-making effort was high (e.g., whichapartment to take, which car to buy, which university to attend, which courses to take) and for whichyou had identified at least three possible alternatives from which to choose (e.g., the apartment onGreen Street, the apartment on West, and the apartment on 32nd). Develop a matrix that indicatesthe decision criteria that you used in making a choice, the importance of each criterion, and howeach alternative is rated on each criterion (e.g., +3= very strong; -3= very weak). Follow the Exhibiton page 224 as an example. Using this matrix, indicate what alternative you would have selectedhad you used a compensatory multi-attribute, conjunctive, disjunctive, lexicographic, andelimination-by-aspects decision-making model. In addition to presenting these results discuss ingreat detail the thought processes that accompanied each. You may utilize a “think-aloud protocol”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_aloud_protocol)  8-4. Deciding What Brand to Choose: High-Effort Feeling-Based
Decisions
Just as consumers can make high-effort thought-based decisions, so too can they make high-effort
feeling-based decisions. With affective decision-making, consumers make a decision because the choice
feels right rather than because they have made a detailed, systematic evaluation of offerings. Or they
may decide that the chosen option feels like a perfect fit, regardless of their prior cognitive processing.
Consumers who make decisions based on feelings tend to be more satisfied afterward than those who
make decisions based on product attributes. Moreover, emotions can also help thought-based decisionmaking since emotions can help consumers gather their thoughts and make judgments more quickly.
As explained in Chapter 6, brands can be associated with positive emotions such as love, joy, pride, and
elation as well as with negative emotions such as guilt, hate, fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, shame, and
greed. These emotions can be recalled to play a central role in the decision process, particularly when
consumers perceive them as relevant to the offering. This affective processing is frequently experiencebased. In other words, consumers select an option based on their recall of past experiences and the
associated feelings. When consumers choose among brands in memory, they must work harder to
process information, so their feelings carry considerable weight. In contrast, when they choose among
brands based on information in ads or other external stimuli, they can focus more on the offering’s
attributes and less on their feelings.
Consumer feelings are particularly critical for offerings with hedonic, symbolic, or aesthetic aspects.
Feelings also influence decisions about what we will consume and for how long. We tend to buy
offerings that make us feel good more often and for longer periods than we buy offerings that do not
have these effects. Note that consumers sometimes buy a product, such as jewelry, simply to make
themselves feel better (see Exhibit 8.7). In other situations, they may make a choice because of a
negative feeling, buying a product out of guilt or shame.
Exhibit 8.7. Affective Decision-Making
Details
Source: Image Courtesy of The Advertising Archives
Consumers sometimes make purchase decisions based on how they feel, as opposed to product
attributes. Ads for Pandora jewelry, seen here, feature good feelings and memories.
8-5. Additional High-Effort Decisions
In addition to deciding which brands to include in a consideration set, deciding what is important to the
choice, and deciding what offerings to choose, consumers in high-effort situations face two more key
decisions. First, should they delay the decision or make it right now? And second, how can they make a
decision when the alternatives cannot be compared?
8-5a. Decision Delay
If consumers perceive the decision to be too risky or if it entails an unpleasant task, they may delay
making a decision. They may also delay if they have too many attractive choices that are difficult to
compare. Another reason for delaying a decision is if consumers feel uncertain about how to get product
information. Delaying a decision can affect a consumer’s evaluation of brands that have features in
common, regardless of whether those features are positive or negative. Specifically, the delay seems to
make the shared features easier to recall and therefore has a greater impact on consumers’ evaluations
of the brands being considered.
Marketing Implications
Should marketers encourage consumers to decide on a purchase right away? Many sales promotion
techniques, including coupons and discounts, are available only to consumers who act quickly. On the
other hand, if consumers delay making their decisions, marketers may have more time to offer
additional information to bolster the chances that their brand will be chosen. Tesla used this strategy to
good advantage when it began to hype its much-anticipated Model 3 electric car nearly two years
before the U.S. launch, using traditional media and social media to reveal information little by little.
Tesla’s founder, Elon Musk, first publicized the $35,000 base price and other details on his Twitter
account, where he has three million followers—building anticipation and interest in advance of the car’s
preorder date.
8-5b. Decision-Making When Alternatives Cannot Be Compared
Consumers sometimes need to choose from a set of options that cannot be directly compared on the
same attributes. For instance, you might be trying to select entertainment for next weekend and may
have the choice of going to the movies, eating at a nice restaurant, renting a video, or attending a party.
Each alternative has different attributes, making comparisons among them difficult.
In making these noncomparable decisions, consumers adopt either an alternative-based strategy or an
attribute-based strategy. Using the alternative-based strategy (also called top-down processing), they
develop an overall evaluation of each option—perhaps using a compensatory or affective strategy—and
base their decision on it. For example, if you were deciding on weekend entertainment, you could
evaluate each option’s pros and cons independently and then choose the one you liked the best.
Using the attribute-based strategy, consumers make comparisons easier for themselves by forming
abstract representations that will allow them to compare the options. In this strategy (also called
bottom-up processing), the choice is constructed or built up. To make a more direct comparison of
options for an entertainment decision, for example, you could construct abstract attributes for them
such as “fun” or “likelihood of impressing a date.” Because using abstractions simplifies the decisionmaking process, consumers tend to use them even when the options are easy to compare.
Note that both strategies can be employed in different circumstances. When the alternatives are less
comparable, consumers tend to use an alternative-based strategy because it is harder for them to create
attribute abstractions. Alternative-based strategies also suit consumers who have well-defined goals
because they can easily recall the various options and their results. For example, if your goal is to find
enjoyable things to do with a date, you could immediately recall a set of options like going to a movie or
eating out, along with your overall evaluation of each option. You would then pick the option with the
strongest evaluation. On the other hand, when consumers lack well-defined goals, they tend to use
attribute-based processing.
Remember that price is often the one attribute on which alternatives can be compared directly.
Consumers typically use price to screen alternatives for the consideration set rather than as the main
basis of comparison among noncomparable alternatives. Thus, when selecting from among
entertainment alternatives, you might use cost to generate a set of options that are reasonably
affordable, and then use an alternative or attribute-based strategy to make the final decision.
Marketing Implications
Because of the way that consumers approach noncomparable decisions, marketers should look at each
product’s or brand’s competition in broad terms as well as understand how the product or brand stacks
up to specific competitors. For example, when consumers are deciding where to go on vacation, their
alternatives may reflect competition between different types of destinations (such as cities or beaches),
activities (such as going to museums or going surfing), and so on. Therefore, marketers might identify
the abstract attributes that consumers use to make these noncomparable evaluations. To illustrate,
stressing an attribute like “historic” could make it easier for consumers to compare products. Then
communications about travel destinations like Scotland could feature multiple attributes (historic
landmarks, old-fashioned steam trains, majestic castles) and suggest how visiting the destination will fit
the “historic” attribute. Pricing is also an important marketing tactic for getting a brand into the
consideration set when consumers cannot directly compare the attributes of various alternatives. Thus,
tourism marketers often use pricing promotions to attract consumers’ attention and encourage them to
make further comparisons based on their goals or on individual attributes.
8-6a. Consumer Characteristics
Characteristics associated with consumers—such as their expertise, mood, extremeness aversion, time
pressure, and metacognitive experiences—can affect the decisions they make.
Expertise
Consumers are more likely to understand their preferences and decisions when they have detailed
consumption vocabularies—meaning that they can articulate exactly why they like or dislike the brands
that they do. For example, a consumer who is an expert in wine may know that he or she likes wines
that are buttery, dry, and smooth, whereas a novice might not know how to articulate these
preferences. Consumers who have this “consumption vocabulary” can use more attributes and
information when making a decision. Expert consumers have more brand-based prior experience and
knowledge and, as a result, tend to use brand-based decision strategies. These consumers know how to
identify relevant information and ignore irrelevant attributes in their decision-making. When consumers
consider complex information, they may simplify the processing task by focusing more on brand effects
and less on attributes, especially if they face more than one complex choice task.
Mood
Consumers who are in a reasonably good mood are more willing to process information and take more
time in making a decision than those who are not in a good mood. When in a good mood, consumers
pay closer attention to the set of brands being considered and think about a higher number of attributes
connected with each brand, a process that can result in more extreme (positive or negative) evaluations.
Another study showed that consumers in a high-arousal mood—feeling excited or very sad, for
instance—tend to process information less thoroughly. Recall is also affected: Consumers in a bad mood
are more likely to accurately recall what a marketing message said, a factor that may affect what
attributes they consider when making their choices. Being in a good mood can also make people think
more about the future and more about the big picture, rather than thinking about the details associated
with the future.
Mood can also influence how positively consumers judge products and their attributes. One study found
that when consumers’ moods were subconsciously influenced by music, consumers in a good mood
rated a set of audio speakers more positively than did consumers in a bad mood. Interestingly,
consumers may deliberately manipulate their moods to help themselves improve their decision
performance. Finally, consumers in a good mood are more willing to try new products because they
perceive lower probabilities of incurring losses.
Time Pressure
As time pressure increases, consumers initially try to process information relevant to their choices
faster. If doing this does not work, they base their decision on fewer attributes and place heavier weight
on negative information, eliminating bad alternatives by using a noncompensatory decision strategy.
Time pressure, one of the major reasons that consumers fail to make intended purchases, can reduce
shopping time and the number of impulsive purchases. Time pressure also affects consumers’ decisions
to delay their choices. Moreover, whether a consumer is present or future-oriented can lead to different
motivations and choices for different products. Present-oriented consumers want to improve their
current well-being and prefer products that help them to do so, such as relaxing vacations and
entertaining books. Future-oriented consumers want to develop themselves and select life-enriching
vacations and books.
Extremeness Aversion
Consumers tend to exhibit extremeness aversion, meaning that options for a particular attribute that
are perceived as extreme will seem less attractive than those perceived as intermediate. This tendency
is the reason that people often find moderately priced options more attractive than options that are
either very expensive or very inexpensive.
When consumers see the attributes of one alternative as being equally dispersed (rather than very close
together or very far apart), they will view this alternative as the compromise option even when it is not
at the overall midpoint among options. According to the compromise effect, a brand will gain share
when it is seen as the intermediate or compromise choice rather than as an extreme choice.
Also, consumers prefer a brand with attributes that score equally well on certain criteria more than a
brand that has unequal scores across attributes, a phenomenon known as attribute balancing.
Metacognitive Experiences
One final set of consumer characteristics that affects the decision-making process is that of
metacognitive experiences. These are factors based on our decision-processing experience, such as how
easy it is to recall information in memory and to form thoughts as well as how easy it is to process new
information. Metacognitive experiences affect decisions beyond formal knowledge by influencing
retrieval ease, inferences, and biases. Thus, it is not just the content of the information that influences
the decision; rather, how this information is processed is also critical.
According to one study, the pleasant experience of being able to process a brand name easily can lead
to a consumer’s favorable attitudes toward that brand. Yet in some cases in which consumers can
process information about the brand more easily—such as seeing the mention of product benefits in an
ad message—they may develop less favorable attitudes toward the brand because they may attribute
that ease of processing to the persuasiveness of the information rather than to the attractiveness of the
brand itself. Other studies have found that individuals are more likely to regard a statement as true
when it is printed in an easy-to-read color or if the words rhyme. In short, metacognitive experiences
affect choices in concert with stimuli and consumer characteristics such as mood.
Summary
Judgments involve forming evaluations or estimates—not always objective—of the likelihood of the
occurrence of events, whereas decisions entail choosing from among options or courses of action.
Consumers make judgments about likelihood, about goodness or badness, and using mental accounting.
Once they recognize a problem, consumers may address it by using cognitive decision-making models
(deciding in a rational, systematic manner) or affective decision-making models (deciding on the basis of
their feelings or emotions). Consumers face a number of other decisions in high-effort situations: which
brands to consider (developing the consideration set), what is important to the choice (how it is affected
by goals, decision timing, and decision framing), what offerings to choose, whether to make a decision
now or delay the decision, and what to do when alternatives cannot be compared (when they can use
an alternative-based or attribute-based strategy).
In thought-based decisions about offerings, consumers may use compensatory or noncompensatory
models, process by brand or by attribute, and consider gains versus losses. Feeling-based decisions
about offerings may rely on appraisals and feelings, affective forecasts and choices, and imagery. Finally,
three types of contextual factors that can influence the decision process are
(1)
consumer characteristics (expertise, mood, time pressure, extremeness aversion, metacognitive
experiences),
(2)
decision characteristics (information availability, information format, trivial attributes), and
(3)
the presence of other people.