Consumer Decision Making Process

In Consumer Decision Making by James Bettman, Eric Johnson, and John Payne, I am going to be analyzing two specific sections: Contingent Consumer Decision Making and Research on Contingent Consumer Decision Making. These sections explore the process and influences when consumer’s make decisions. I have included information and analysis that I have acquired through other students I have talked to about this topic.Contingent Consumer Making Process
The first section of the article emphasizes that there are three main factors that influence consumers to make decisions. These three factors are characteristics of the decision problems, characteristics of the person, and characteristics of the social context.
The first factor describes the situation a consumer is in when making their decision. Is the decision complex or simple? Is there a set time to make the decision? How many alternatives are available to them? The answer to those questions will have an effect on how a consumer will react when faced with a choice. In my own experience, I asked students in a class to create two different gifts; one for their friend and another for their parent or grandparent. I gave everyone five to seven minutes to complete this task using one of five given pictures and a website that allows people to paste images on products. I asked them several questions about the products they chose, what were they thinking about when making their decisions, and if factors differs-how would their product change? Some students felt that since there was a time pressure, they were not able to explore all their options and would maybe create a more extravagant gift (with text or a design that included more pictures). Others felt that if they were given more freedom in the assignment, they would find the most unique item- that other websites do not offer- and make a gift for themselves but it would take a lot longer to create. Everyone agreed that it was easier being guided with a specified audience and a time limit. They felt having a wider range of pictures would have been more ideal though because they would have chosen different pictures that would have suited the gift better.
The second factor, characteristics of the person, also has a great impact on decision making. I asked the students to create an object for two different audiences in order to compare how different the end products were. The main factor that differed was usability, products that a parent might use, a person in their early 20s might now. For example, I designed a shark wall cling for my friend using the website. Now obviously that is not an ideal gift for my own mother but maybe it is for someone else’s. Everyone has different things that they like and this section of the article points out that individual differences influences contingent decision behavior. Your target audience can absolutely vary from someone else’s, depending on the characteristics of that person.
The final factor, characteristics of the social context, talks about the influence of accountability. Making a decision for yourself might be easier than making a decision that affects multiple people. During discussion, and briefly covered in the article, was the effect of elimination. When consumers have a specific audience in mind, they often have an idea of what they want to create. This causes them to not explore all available options. Social context influences consumers to think of what the audience would like and purchase a product based on intuition.
Contingent Consumer Decision MakingThe other section of the reading, Research on Contingent Consumer Decision Making, includes examples from research that shows what effects consumer choice processes. The covered effects involve problem factors (task variables and context variables) and person factors (prior knowledge and ability).
The amount of given information affects the way someone is going to make a choice. Sometimes it is better to have more options, such as when you buy a new TV; a customer needs enough information about the product in order to buy it since it is a big purchase. The customer might not be satisfied or even purchase the product if they do not have enough information about it. On the contrary, it can also be difficult when you are given too much information and have to make too many decisions. This can make the decision process difficult for consumers. Naturally, consumers like to make things easy. So when faced with too many decisions, this is where elimination takes place. Going back to my experience with the class, one student did not even bother going through all the tabs on the website based on the category it was in without actually seeing what it had to offer. Maybe she would have liked an item under that tab better? It was just easier to just ignore it so she was not overwhelmed with too many choices.
My own experience with other students and having read both of the sections of Consumer Decision Making has helped me to understand more of the influences and motivates behind consumer’s decision making process.
Citations
Bettman, James R., Eric J. Johnson, and John W. Payne. "Consumer Decision Making." (n.d.): n. pag. BerkeleyHaas. University of California Berkeley. Web. 17 July 2015. <http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/Courses/Spring2000/BA269D/BettmanJohnsonPayne91.pdf>.