Exam 14: Consumer Decision Making and Diffusion of Innovations

The inert set consists of the small number of brands the consumer is familiar with, remembers, and finds acceptable.

________ implies the notion of a trade-off of benefits - like the features of the purchased item - versus the sacrifice necessary to purchase it - like the time investment and the price.

The four elements of the diffusion of innovations process include: the innovation, the channels of communication, the social system, and time.

What are the differences between continuous, dynamically continuous, and discontinuous innovation?

The ________ component of the consumer decision-making model is concerned with how consumers make decisions.

$\text{COLLEGE MINI CASE:}$ Evelyn is a high-school senior from Philadelphia looking to apply to colleges. She has decided to apply to the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and Princeton. She chose not to apply to Brown, Dartmouth, or Yale because she considers them to be too far away from home. A college counselor had suggested to her that Columbia has a comparable reputation to the schools Evelyn was considering, but Evelyn didn't perceive Columbia as having any particular advantage over the schools to which she had already decided to apply. She is eventually accepted to, and decides to attend Cornell University. Upon arriving on campus, Evelyn immediately notices a deliberate effort on the part of the college to make new students not only feel at home, but that they have absolutely made the right decision in attending Cornell. -In the COLLEGE MINI CASE, when Cornell tries to convince students that they have made the right decision, they are trying to encourage a positive ________.

Comments of a friend, an editorial in the newspaper, and usage of a product by a family member are examples of ________.

Of the three levels of consumer decision making, ________ requires the greatest effort on the part of the consumer.

Conjunctive, disjunctive, and lexicographic rules are examples of ________.

Consumers are frequently presented with incomplete information. Identify four strategies that consumers can adopt for coping with missing information.

The number of alternatives available when making a purchase decision does not affect the decision-making process.

One of the weaknesses of the innovation adoption process framework is it does not adequately provide for the possibility of evaluation and rejection of a new product or service after each stage.

Task complexity, information organization, and time constraint are the three major contextual factors in decision tasks.

$\text{MP3 MINI CASE:}$ Judy wants a new MP3 player so she can listen to music while she runs. She currently runs with a CD player, but is irritated with the frequency with which it skips and the limited amount of music that can be stored on a CD. After reviewing several consumer reviews on various tech websites, she identifies 5 different MP3 player models that might meet her needs. She decides that she needs at least 20 gigabytes of data storage on her player, and eliminates all options with fewer than 20 GB. There are now 3 models remaining. She then decides that she will only accept players with at least 15 hours of battery life. She is now considering only 2 players. Player A is heavier, but has a longer battery life. Player B is lighter, but has a shorter battery life. Judy chooses Player A because she believes that the longer battery life more than compensates for the additional weight. -In the MP3 MINI CASE, Judy's need recognition style makes her a(n)________ type.

In a(n)________, the consumer establishes a separate, minimally acceptable level as a cutoff point for each brand attribute he or she is considering.

Airplanes, radios, TVs, automobiles, fax machines, PCs, videocassette recorders, and the Internet are all examples of dynamically continuous innovations.

Maria needs a new pair of jeans. She knows that pants from American Eagle, in size 10, tend to fit her very well in the waist and hips and are long enough, so she goes to American Eagle and picks up a pair. Maria's is a case of ________.

$\text{COLLEGE MINI CASE:}$ Evelyn is a high-school senior from Philadelphia looking to apply to colleges. She has decided to apply to the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and Princeton. She chose not to apply to Brown, Dartmouth, or Yale because she considers them to be too far away from home. A college counselor had suggested to her that Columbia has a comparable reputation to the schools Evelyn was considering, but Evelyn didn't perceive Columbia as having any particular advantage over the schools to which she had already decided to apply. She is eventually accepted to, and decides to attend Cornell University. Upon arriving on campus, Evelyn immediately notices a deliberate effort on the part of the college to make new students not only feel at home, but that they have absolutely made the right decision in attending Cornell. -In the COLLEGE MINI CASE, Evelyn's college counselor is a(n)________ source of prepurchase information.

Which of the following is NOT one of the ways consumers cope with missing information during the decision-making process:

A unique feature of a compensatory decision rule is that it allows a positive evaluation of a brand on one attribute to balance out a negative evaluation on some other attribute.