Running Head: CONTEXT EFFECTS AND DECISION MAKING OF CONSUMERS

Context effects and decision making of consumers

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The decision making process of consumer is a very important topic of discussion in

industry and academic institution. Because determining the relationship between a products
properties and the decision making process of consumer, a company can easily increase its sales.
Schwarz & Sudman (2012) has suggested that the context effect is form of cognitive psychology
that illustrates the effects of external factors on the thought process of a person. Context effect is
an important topic in psychology. It considers the background events that influence the thought
process of a person. This paper aims at highlighting the promising features of important research
studies conducted on consumer behavior regarding decision making for a product.
American political scientist and noble price winning economist, sociologist and
psychologist Herbert A. Simon coined the term unbounded rationality. He worked on decision
making process of a person and did research on overlapping multi-disciplinary topics. Alba &
Hutchinson (1987), in their important research, analyzed fundamental experimental results from
the psychological literature in a manner that gives a valuable understanding to determine the
decision making process of a consumer. A calculated association for this differing writing is
given by two key qualifications. Firstly, the difference between the consumer expertise and
product related experience has been discussed and supported in detail.
Second, five distinct aspects, or dimensions, of expertise are identified: cognitive effort,
cognitive structure, analysis, elaboration, and memory. Enhancements in the initial two
directions are appeared to have general valuable impacts on the recent three. Examination,
elaboration, and memory are appeared to have more particular interrelationships. The exact
discoveries identified with every measurement are audited and, on the premise of those
discoveries, particular examination theories about the impacts of skill on buyer conduct are

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recommended. In this paragraph, we have discussed the summary of the work of Alba &
Hutchinson (1987) on Dimensions of consumer expertise.
This research study discussed in the last paragraph is very important and despite it being
28 years old, its importance cannot be ignored. The implications of this research study still hold
true. Another promising feature of this research of Alba & Hutchinson (1987) is the fact that they
made use of other important research studies from the past. At that time, the area of study of
consumer behavior was a new independent discipline. Thats why their groundbreaking work
highlighted many amazing results that can be used to exploit the decision making process of a
consumer regarding a particular product. There is strong relationship between the decision
making of consumer and the knowledge that consumer already have regarding that product.
There is no denying the fact that different market forces shape the decision making
process of a consumer. On the other hand, the past experience, events and current needs of the
consumer all play vital role in defining the actions of a consumer regarding linking and disliking
a product. The consumers, who are going to use a product for the first time, are easy to be
convinced to purchase a product because they do not have any set principles regarding purchase
of that kind of product. At the end, we can conclude that the consumers who are going to
purchase a product for the second or more times, they generally consider different aspects of that
product and they also compare that product with other substitutes.

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References
Alba, J. W., & Hutchinson, J. W. (1987). Dimensions of consumer expertise. Journal of
consumer research, 411-454.
Schwarz, N., & Sudman, S. (Eds.). (2012). Context effects in social and psychological research.
Springer Science & Business Media.