ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how marketers can use their understanding of the cognitive processes by which people make judgments to develop and implement various marketing actions. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper began their intriguing line of research by challenging some basic economic principles pertaining to the assumption that the greater the availability of tempting offers placed in front of consumers, the higher the resulting levels of consumption. Decision-making research has demonstrated that preferences are dependent upon a variety of factors, including the particular features of the context in which choices are made, the set of options available, the nature and amount of available information, the degree of uncertainty about attribute values, the difficulty of trade-offs involved, and the time available to make a decision. A fundamental focus of psychological research and theory is human decision making; specifically, the cognitive processes by which people make judgments.
