4. Explain how consumers use their goals, decision timing, and framing to decide which criteria are important for a particular choice. Judgments involve forming evaluations or estimates—not always objective—of the likelihood of the occurrence of events, whereas decisions entail choosing from among options or courses of action. Consumers make judgments about likelihood, about goodness or badness, and using mental accounting.

Once they recognize a problem, consumers may address it by using cognitive decision-making models (deciding in a rational, systematic manner) or affective decision-making models

(deciding on the basis of their feelings or emotions). Consumers face a number of other decisions in high-effort situations:

which brands to consider (developing the consideration set), what is important to the choice (how it is affected by goals, decision timing, and decision framing), what offerings to choose, whether to make a decision now, and what to do when alternatives cannot be compared.