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Q

&A

You have found that people don’t always have well-de-

fined preferences—and that we often ‘make up the rules’

for a decision on the spot. Describe how this works.

When people make choices, they don’t simply refer to a

‘master list’ of preferences in their memory, or some pre-

existing choice algorithm. They use a wide variety of ap-

proaches and rules-of-thumb — and my colleagues and I

found that these are often developed on the spot. We came

up with the ‘constructive process view’ of decision making,

which states that individuals often build strategies opportu-

nistically, changing their processing on the spot depending

upon the information they encounter during the course of

solving the decision problem.

At the time, we realized that, if people are making

things up as they go along, and if — as many studies had

shown — the information that is most salient or noticeable

in an environment is what gets people’s attention, these are

very significant findings for marketers. There are endless

ways to embrace these insights, whether it means that you

A consumer behaviour

research pioneer

discusses some of his

most important findings.

Interview by Karen Christensen

QUESTIONS FOR James Bettman, Professor of Marketing, Duke University