A Million Answers to Twenty Questions: Choosing by Checklist
26 Pages Posted: 23 May 2008
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A Million Answers to Twenty Questions: Choosing by Checklist
Date Written: February 2008
Abstract
Many decision models in marketing science and psychology assume that a consumer chooses by proceeding sequentially through a checklist of desirable properties. These models are contrasted to the utility maximization model of rationality in economics. We show on the contrary that the two approaches are nearly equivalent. Moreover, the length of the shortest checklist as a proportion of the number of an agent's indifference classes shrinks to 0 (at an exponential rate) as the number of indifference classes increases. Checklists therefore provide a rapid procedural basis for utility maximization.
Keywords: utility maximization, procedural rationality, bounded rationality, choice behavior
JEL Classification: D01
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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