Practical implications

It is hoped that the comprehensive media choice model and concepts presented in this study will help the media companies better understand audience behavior and

the decision-making process of their customers. It is hoped that this study helps companies in finding new media markets based on needs analysis. There are marketing opportunities, if there are unsatisfied needs. Examining what motives people have for their media usage (Table 8) and about how well these motives are gratified by media usage (Table 10), we can conclude that there are interesting ungratified markets. These markets are rather large, too. For example, “Get something to do” (67% of media users), “Spend time pleasantly” (89% of media users), “Get something else to think about” (59% of media users) and “Avoid doing anything” (39% of media users). There are other markets that are gratified to some extent but could be better.

Such markets are mood management market, self-comforting and self-rewarding market, avoiding loneliness market, and self-branding market. The problem with marketing is that the products must be made to seem superb; otherwise no one would be interested in them. The marketer should aim to create high enough expectations that consumers want to choose the products but be careful to not exaggerate the benefits in order to avoid disappointments. The model of forming expectations reveals many possible interventions spots a marketer can use and provides help in managing the formation of consumer expectations.

It is important to know how people categorize products and form the consideration sets. If the product is in a “wrong” category, it cannot be chosen, since it is missing from the consideration set (from which the person makes his/her choice). Marketers could benefit a great deal from investigating closely how their customers and potential customers compose their consideration sets. There is a booming market in measuring top-of-mind brands and the brands remembered with and without aid. But these measures only provide information on the amount of marketing and remembering, which is only a small part of consideration set composition. It is possible to manage consumers’ consideration set composition process. First one needs to find out how customers compose their consideration sets at the moment. The results of this study showed that categorization is the most used method when composing the consideration set. The companies can influence the categories and consideration sets by marketing, branding, and positioning their products. Positioning is quite similar to categorizing, except companies do positioning and consumers do categorizing. Positioning is purposeful guidance in categorizing. In order to position successfully, one needs to know where the customers place the company’s product and how they define the categories.

It has been shown that consumers experience many kinds of costs. The results of this study showed that nonmonetary costs are relevant in consumers’ media choices and affect their usage. The companies can sell only a certain amount with an altered monetary price. Even though lowering the price typically adds sales, it also lowers the profit margin. The companies are usually very aware of how (monetary) pricing affects their demand and income. Money is the only cost that affects the income directly (it is the income). The audience’s time and attention represent potential for selling and are thus a form of indirect income. The results showed that consumers experience psychological and social costs. They also need to use their energy in order to use media. The media companies do not benefit from these costs, and it would be wise to lower them as much as possible. Managing consumers’ (non-monetary) costs might be quite easy and very profitable.

The usage of different decision-making strategies yields different choices. For marketers it would be essential to know how their customers decide, because it not only determines the possible outcome of the decision, but also the optimal marketing strategy. Therefore, it would be advisable to optimize the marketing policy based on the knowledge of customers’ decision strategies. Some decision strategies are based on considering brands and some deal more with the attributes. The companies can benefit from the knowledge of how their customers decide, by adjusting their marketing strategy accordingly. For example, if the customers generally use satisficing (SAT) in decision-making, it is important to be one of the top-of-mind brands (and the product has to be good enough). If customers use lexicographic (LEX) decision-making, it would be important to find out what is the key feature and make sure the product is the best in that feature (and that customers know that). If customers use elimination by aspects (EBA), the marketer should find out what the most important features are and what the minimum requirements are.

Then they need to make sure that the most important features of the product are good and at least above the cut-off level (and that customers know it). The empirical results showed that the decision task and the level of resources affect the choice of decision goal and decision strategy. People decide differently if there is time pressure or if the choice is difficult. This is interesting, because these features can be manipulated. The marketers can rather easily affect consumer decision-making by manipulating time pressure and decision difficulty. Time pressure can be created by using deadlines in offers (“only today”), creating shortage (“limited edition”), and giving small discounts if the deal is closed right away. Time pressure can encourage customers to close the deal – or abandon it, but it also changes what

is chosen. The results showed that, when having time pressure people tend to use LEX or SAT in decision-making. Therefore, marketers should create a time limit if their brand has significant negative features and remove the time limit if they want to be able to compensate for the poorer features with good ones. The difficulty customers experience when making decisions can also be manipulated. Decisions are more difficult if there are a lot of alternatives and attributes. The number of alternatives can be influenced by positioning, and the number of attributes are easy to add. The results showed that people use more SAT or INT when decisions are difficult. Therefore, marketers should add complexity if they do not want their customers to deliberate their choices (the product is not superior) and simplify the choices when their product is good, and they want the customers to be able to deliberate their choices.

If the consumer concept is understood widely, the model might also be highly useful for social decision makers trying to influence citizens’ behavior. For example, citizens have been advised to consume domestic products, eat healthy food, quit smoking, drink less alcohol, etc. The authorities try to intervene with citizens’

decisions by giving information, providing incentives to act properly, and manipulating the cost of bad behavior (change the tax on different goods and services). However, these methods are not working very well (e.g., Verplanken and Wood 2006). It is hoped that the model presented in this study will inspire the authorities to find better ways to guide citizens and thus build a better society. The models are hoped to be useful for consumer themselves, as individual decision makers. If we as consumers understand better how we make decisions (the needs, the underlying psychological mechanisms, and all the little things that influence our decisions), we are able to make better decisions in future.