Decision-Making within Customer Evaluations

Eapen (2009) defines a decision as, “A conclusion reached or an action taken regarding a present or future based event based on past, present or forecasted information.” Based on this definition, the current perspective of this research aims to understand the information assessors use in an evaluation setting, e.g., structured evaluations or market research.

Eysenck and Keane (2005) highlight the multi-component nature of decisions when describing judgements as a part of the decision-making process which involves the estimation and likelihood of events occurring. There are a number of decision-making analysis which have

been investigated such as making decisions under risk (Kahneman and Tversky, 1981), economic decision-making and examining choices (Nutt and Wilson, 2010). However, some choice based decision-making may not reveal new information used in evaluations by customers. Svenson (1979) advises decision-making may not always be fully understood by examining final choice decisions which have traditionally gathered attention from Judgement and Decision-Making researchers. Decision-making literature therefore can be broadly categorised into two areas. One of the areas focuses on heuristics and rationalised thinking during choice-based tasks (Kahneman and Tversky, 1981), and second focuses on understanding the decision-making events which occur in real-world settings, e.g., naturalistic

decision-making (Lipshitz et al., 2001; Klein, 2008).

Influences within Decision-Making

Miller and van Cott (1955) have long established the roles of intervening criteria which can influence the decision-processor and as a result the overall decision, (Fig. 3.2).

Figure 3.2: Factors involved in decision-making (Adapted from Miller and van Cott, 1955)

Within Fig. 3.2, the authors raise the awareness of understanding the stimulus variables not directly presented as part of the experiment. For example, stimulus variables may not be directly presented in an evaluation however, the evaluation process may elicit certain information to be

used in the participants decision-making process. However, Fig. 3.2 does not show the stages in which decisions are made. It is necessary to understand the cognitive stages which occur during an evaluation, which will be examined next.

Understanding the inaccessible information or criteria may need to be identified in order to understand the influence of evaluations. As this research is concerned with understanding the information or criteria used by customers during an evaluation of a vehicle attribute, it is important to further examine how information is processed in evaluations.

Examining the Decision-Making Process

The decision-making process revolves around four stages presented in Fig. 3.3 (Sudman et al., 1996; Tourangaeu et al., 2000).

Figure 3.3: Four stages of a judgment making process (adapted from Sudman et al., 1996)

It is evident from documenting the response processes outlined by the authors that each decision-making step is dependent on previous steps. Suggesting that the eventual response made in the final stage is dependent on the information retrieved from either memory or information presented. Sudman et al. (1996) elaborate on each of the steps:

A. Comprehend/Interpret: In the first step, the individual needs to understand the environment, the task, and the stimulus presented. This stage helps individuals establish a set of boundaries and identify how and what information they need in order to answer the question.

B. Retrieval: This is the second stage which requires the individual to recall information from either the long-term/short-term memory stores. This stage allows the relevant information in the form of knowledge to be accessed. It is suggested

that this information shapes the decisions individuals make in an evaluation. Limited research has looked at identifying these knowledge structures.

C. Judgment:Once the relevant information is received from memory, the individual can take steps to determine if the information recalled meets the task requirements of the question being asked, this can include processes such as determining the level of occurrences of the retrieved information, to estimation strategies.

D. Response Generation:The final stage of the process culminates at generating the response. This is also a stage where individuals have conscious control to either omit or overestimate certain aspects of their information.

One of the challenges facing decision-making research is the difficulty in accessing the decision-making processes carried out which can explain why the knowledge structures or decision-making criteria customers use in automotive evaluations has not been researched. This identifies a potential gap in existing knowledge and provides a suitable opportunity for this research to examine the information which is used in the retrieval stages of decision-making processes during a given evaluation. The identified gap in knowledge can be used to establish the second research question in this thesis:

Research Question 2) How do the decision-making criteria used by assessors compare between market research techniques and structured evaluations?

Answering this question based on the available literature suggests new knowledge can be generated in this area which could also be valuable to engineers in automotive NPD to understand the issues customers face earlier in the product development and design phases. Eventually the knowledge can help engineers to improve vehicles and attain better evaluation responses from customers by being aware of how customers evaluate vehicle attributes. The next stage is to examine how to observe decision-making processes carried out by individuals in a valid and repeatable method.