Consumer Decision Processes: Getting More (and Better) Information

Abstract

Part of the challenge of studying how consumers actually make purchase decisions stems from the fact that there is usually no visible trace of the decision process. Different experimental approaches have been devised to provide researchers with clues to the strategies used in making purchase decisions. One is the use of information display boards, in which decision makers request or reach for a specific piece of information in order to use it. To make up for the limitation of display boards—that they provide little insight into the decision process itself—consumers are sometimes queried to learn what information they used and how they used it. Those recall approaches, however, are limited to what can be remembered by decision makers. In complex choice tasks, consumers often fail to remember important information they used in the decision. To address forgetting, a concurrent verbal protocol is sometimes employed. In a concurrent verbal protocol people are instructed to “speak aloud what is being thought” during the decision. But it requires considerable training and has other possible drawbacks as well.