Discuss some other “rules” consumers may use when evaluating alternatives in order to make a purchase decision.

One way that consumers can evaluate alternatives is to decide on important attributes and assess how the alternatives perform on those attributes. Each attribute, such as automobile gas mileage, is given a weight to reflect its level of importance to that consumer. Then, the consumer evaluates each alternative on each attribute. For example, in the table below, gas mileage (weighted at 0.5) is the most important automobile purchase attribute for this consumer. The consumer believes that Brand C performs best on gas mileage, rating it 7 (higher ratings indicate higher performance), Brand B rates worst on gas mileage (rating of 3).

Styling and price are the consumer’s next two most important attributes; warranty is least important. A score for each brand can be calculated by multiplying the importance weight for each attribute by the brand’s score on that attribute. These weighted scores are then summed to determine the score for that brand. For example, Score _{Brand A} = (0.2 × 4) + (0.5 × 6) + (0.1 × 5) + (0.2 × 4) = 0.8 + 3.0 + 0.5 + 0.8 = 5.1. This consumer will select the brand with the highest score. For more discussion of the financial and quantitative implications of marketing decisions, see Appendix 2: Marketing by the Numbers.

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Attributes Styling Gas mileage Warranty Price Alternative Brands Importance Weight 0.2 0.5 0.1 0.2 4 6 4 4