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Table 1 Overview of common decision strategies*

From: How do healthcare consumers process and evaluate comparative healthcare information? A qualitative study using cognitive interviews

Decision strategy

Short description

Weighted addititive (WADD)

Taking into account the values of each alternative on all relevant attributes; considering the relative importance of each attribute; multipying weights times attribute values; summing weighted attribute values over all attributes.

Additive difference (ADDIF)

Comparing pairs of alternatives directly on each dimension; determining the differences between subjective values of alternatives on a particular dimension; applying weighting function to each difference and summing results over all dimensions to obtain overall relative evaluation of two alternatives.

Equal weight (EQW)

Choosing on basis of the sum of all values; ignoring information about relative importance.

Elimination-by-aspects (EBA)

Assessing most important attribute; eliminating all options that are not satisfactory with respect to that attribute; repeating for next most important attribute and so on, until there is one option left.

Satisfying (SAT)

Choosing the first option that is satisfactory.

Lexicographic (LEX)

Assessing most important attribute; selecting the option that has the best value on that attribute.

Lexicographic semiorder (LEXSEMI)

Assessing most important attribute; selecting the option that has the best value on that attribute; including notion of selecting alternatives that are within just-noticeable difference (JND) of the best alternative.

Majority of confirming dimensions (MCD)

Choosing by comparing pairs of alternatives; winner is compared with the next alternative in the set; simplified version of the ADDIF strategy (only direction of differences is considered, not the magnitude).

Frequency knowlegde (FRQ)

Counting the number of good and bad features; the option with the smallest numer of bad features or the option with the biggest number of good features is chosen.

Habitual heuristic

Choosing what you chose last time.

Affect referral

Recalling from memory previously formed evaluations for familiar alternatives; choosing acoordingly.

Price-oriented

Buying the cheapest product.

In store

Buying the first product you find.

  1. * The decision strategies are based on descriptions in Payne, Bettman, and Johnson (1993)21 and Devetag (1999).22