For most consumers, giving reasons for which actions were done is very common and important, since they have to justify their decisions so as to feel more relieved and comfortable (Shafir, Simonson, and Tversky 1993). In fact, there are many choice problems around daily life, and these problems are usually resulted from without clear preference or lack of enough knowledge to well identify the values of the options. On account of the variety of decisions circumstances, people are not always easy to find reasons for decisions and be hard to feel relieved about the choice. However, pervious researches discuss many elements which cause different purchasing context, such as presentation way of products, the characteristic of products, and so on. Even though, there are few studies to talk about how people easy or hard to justify their decision or choice when they be in those conditions.
In reality, sometimes people have multiple options to consider at same time (ex:
shopping in department store). But under certain conditions, people relatively may only contact with single product or option (ex: display window). Several researchers suggest that the presentation of products would lead people use different evaluation mode (joint evaluation and separate evaluation) and then bias their choice (e.g. Hsee and Zhang 2004).
Simply illustrate, people contacting with multiple or single option would generate different reasons to justify decisions (Hsee‟s 1996; Okada 2005).
Take an example to discuss, consider to buying one car may focus on some features, such as horsepower, engine, shapes, brand, etc. If there are many cars promoted, and then we naturally compare together. After the comparison, the one has compelling advantages would be favorable. Likewise, the one show the weakness will be eliminated from the choice list directly. On the contrary, if we only see one car in display window, we don‟t have
available comparison, our judgment mostly come from how we feel about that car.
Consequently, we may like it because the brand is famous, or don‟t like it because the shape is too heavy. That is because people tend to use the most available or salient information at the moment (Hsee and Leclerc 1998) to help them evaluate the options and justify in decisions. It appears that presenting options together or alone will yield different types of information to have dissimilar accessibilities and then influence the evaluations.
Furthermore, we discover that it is common to see related products be presented together, such as ice cream stores or 3C shops. Though people can compare products directly, they are not necessary to feel easily to determine which option they want or which one is better.
For instance, stand in front of ice cream store, facing a great number of flavors and all of them seem so delicious and attractive. Thus, the comparison may let us fall into uncomfortable trade-offs. It is probably that giving peoples multiple options to compare not necessary guarantee to better discerning the values of options. Conversely, if only see one kind of ice cream putting in the display window, people don‟t need to struggle for which is to choice, thus, may be easier to make up their mind to accept or not. Accordingly, some products appear more appropriate to be presented jointly while some do not.
In the cause of the most available information can be the justifications, while it is not useful every time. Since one product may contain variety of attributes, and provide many advantages. Some people purchasing good to fulfill functional or practical requirements (utilitarian products), the other may focus on the experience or entertainment gains (hedonic products) (e.g. Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Batra and Ahtola 1990). Thus, consuming products for different needs would make people pay attention on different parts (Chernev 2004; Higgins 1997). For instance, it is more important to notice the performance of washing machines, such as load size and clearing power. Nevertheless, buying cakes seems more focus on how wonderful to eat it, and pay attention to evaluate the flavor or design.
On the basis of discussion above, buying different kinds of products may be beneficial by corresponding decision context.
It is common to see purchase problem in the same product category rather than different categories, just as mention above, shopping in 3C shops or cake stores. In order to solve the problem, consumers usually seek several justifications and make evaluation to determine to make decisions. However, in the past more discover about how people make choice between different product categories through justification aspect and there is few researches talk about the same product category.
To sum up the discussion above, the characteristic of products would influence how people evaluated it except for connecting with products jointly or separately. Indeed, how to present products in the most beneficial manner seems to be the marketers‟ main concern when they promote products. What is more, marketers usually have the power to affect people connecting with products jointly or separately. Thus, first and foremost, our research purpose is to figure out that when did consumers easy to justify in decisions and feel relieved. Second, realize that how marketers should present their products would let consumers easy to understand the values depend on different product attributes. Importantly, our research distinguishes into two streams to talk about the ease of justification in purchase decision, for utilitarian purchase and for hedonic purchase. According to the discussion, provide some advice for managers and future researches in the last.