Marketing Commons^™

Multiple Category Decision Making: Review And Synthesis, Gary J. Russell, S. Ratneshwar, Allan D. Shocker, David Bell, Anand Bodapati, Alex Degeratu, Lutz Hildebrandt, Namwoon Kim, Seshan Ramaswami, Venkatesh H. Shankar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In many purchase environments, consumers use information from a number of product categories prior to making a decision. These purchase situations create dependencies in choice outcomes across categories. As such, these decision problems cannot be easily modeled using the single-category, single-choice paradigm commonly used by researchers in marketing. We outline a conceptual framework for categorization, and then discuss three types of cross-category dependence: cross-category consideration cross-category learning, and product bundling. We argue that the key to modeling choice dependence across categories is knowledge of the goals driving consumer behavior.