Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Process of decision making-2

In our last post we have discussed on important factor of decision making and that is involvement. Involvement is always reflected in production or productivity. We can take example for an instant life insurance rates company who is providing life insurance quotes online, if their agents more involve in the businesses they can have more business. More involvement reflected in more productivity. Today we are going to discuss one another important factor Differentiation.

Differentiation: When the consumer perceives that the various alternatives which are available are very different from one another in terms of their features and benefits offered, he is likely to spend more time in gathering information about and evaluating these different features. On the other hand, in case of products which are not very different from one another either in terms of their features or benefits offered, the consumer is bound to perceive them as being almost the same and buy the first available product/brand which satisfies his minimum expectation. He will not like to spend much time in evaluating the various alternatives. The various brands of washing powder available in the market today are an excellent example of low level of differentiation with the consumer perceiving the different brands to be offering almost identical benefits. All the brands, such as Nirma, Vimal, Vijay, etc. look similar with identical packing and carry almost the same price tag.