Unravelling Consumer Choices: A Comparative Analysis of Decision-Making Models

This case provides an illustration of the application of various consumer decision-making models to select from a number of alternatives, represented here by physics-related smartphone apps. It covers the weighted additive difference, conjunctive, disjunctive, lexicographical, and elimination by aspects methodologies, representing popular consumer decision-making models in managerial area. It also covers the simple additive weighting (SAW) approach from multi-attribute decision-making area. In addition, it highlights the rank inconsistency phenomenon, which is often considered unavoidable with most decision-making models. Here, this paper applies the unified commensurate multiple (UCM) approach, which successfully addresses this problem of rank inconsistency and leads to more consistent rankings, whereby removal of the lowest-ranked alternative does not affect the overall rankings of the abovementioned smartphone apps.