Exam 13: Decision Making II: Alternative Evaluation and Choice

Consumers often infer the existence of underlying attributes, such as quality, through perceptual attributes, such as price.

Which term describes the perceived relationship between attributes of products?

Consumers can combine decision rules to arrive at a final solution.

When information about some attributes is missing, consumers tend to weight the criteria that are common to both alternatives quite heavily in the evaluation.

Which term refers to a characteristic that allows a consumer to diagnose something distinctive about an alternative?

A consumer is deciding which television to purchase and has identified the determinant attributes and their importance as well has his beliefs of how the three brands he's considering perform on each attribute. Given the following information, answer the questions that follow. (a) Assuming a minimum cutoff point of 5, use the conjunctive rule to determine the brand that will be selected. Explain your answer. (b) Assuming a minimum cutoff point of 9, use the disjunctive rule to determine the brand that will be selected. Explain your answer. (c) Use the lexicographic rule to determine the brand that will be selected. Explain your answer. (d) Assuming a minimum cutoff point of 5, use the elimination-by-aspects rule (EBA) to determine the brand that will be selected. Explain your answer. Attribute Importance Brand A Brand B Brand C Picture quality 10 5 10 6 Low price 7 8 3 7 Warranty 5 4 4 8 Service 6 4 6 8

Absolute quality refers to the actual quality of a product that can be assessed through industry specification or expert rating.

Compensatory rules allow consumers to select products that may perform poorly on one attribute by compensating for the poor performance by good performance on another attribute.

Name and describe the four types of noncompensatory decision rules.

An advertisement with a Ford F-150 pick-up truck driving through a construction zone would appeal to a consumer using what kind of criteria when evaluating alternatives?

Cluster analysis is used to understand the attributes that guide preferences by having consumers compare products across levels of evaluative criteria and the expected utility associated with the alternatives.

With affect-based evaluation, consumers evaluate products based on the overall feeling that is evoked by the alternative.

Which of the following are mental assessments of the presence of attributes and the benefits associated with those attributes?

Consumers actually use decision rules quite frequently, but the comparisons are almost always made mentally rather than using mathematical formulas.

Carl is evaluating an xBox 360, a PS3, and a Nintendo Wii and has identified attributes to compare, such as price, game options, DVD players, and so on. He has decided that a game player must score above his minimum cutoffs. However, he has set these minimum cutoffs relatively high, and he will select the one that exceeds the relatively high cutoff on any attribute he's identified. Which decision rule is Carl using?

What part of the evaluative criteria is a better picture quality of a high-definition television?

Compensatory rules are often used in low-involvement situations.

A benefit is a perceived favourable result that is derived from the presence of a particular feature.

When Nicole was searching for a house she looked at the most important attribute, which was the number of bedrooms, and eliminated any option that did not meet a minimum cutoff point of three. She then evaluated houses based on her next most important attribute, the number of bathrooms, and eliminated those that did not have at least two. She continued this process until only one option was left. What decision rule was Nicole using?

Which term is used to describe the practice of offering essentially identical products with different model numbers or names?