CONSUMERS’ MENTAL REPRESENTATION OF COMPLEX DECISION
PROBLEMS
Theo A. Arentze1 and Benedict G.C. Dellaert2
1
Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning,
Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The
Netherlands. Phone: +31 40 2472283; fax: + 31 40 2475882; e-mail:
t.a.arentze@bwk.tue.nl
2
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration,
Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands, phone: +31
43 388 3250, fax: +31 43 388 4918, email: b.dellaert@mw.unimaas.nl
Abstract
We investigate how consumers, when faced with a complex decision problem, construct a
mental representation of this problem. We propose a theoretical structure to describe
these mental representations in terms of a set of alternative actions, a mental model of
attributes of the situation and the alternatives that are relevant to the decision, and an
individual and situation-specific selection of required benefits. We empirically test three
key hypotheses derived from the proposed theoretical structure on the basis of data on
consumers’ mental representations of decision problems across four different shopping
trip scenarios, and find support for the proposed structure.
1