For the remainder of this module, we're going to look a little more closely at some of the ways that you can actually influence this decision making process. Because it turns out that in some cases, at least, you can in fact play an active role in structuring the decision situation to guide your customers toward the correct choice that is to your choice. One way you can do this is to have a say in the evaluative criteria that consumers use when they're making decisions. These are the dimensions we use to judge the merits of competing options. The criteria on which products differ from one another, carry more weight in the decision process, then do those where the alternatives are similar on various dimensions. determinant attributes are the features we actually use To differentiate among our choices, let's take a real world example to demonstrate how this works.

Consumer research by church and Dwight indicated that many consumers view the use of natural ingredients as a determinant attribute. As a result, the company promoted its toothpaste made from baking soda, which the company already manufactured for church and Dwight's Armand hammer brand. The takeaway is simply to be proactive about educating your customer on which evaluative criteria are determinant attributes. You can point out that there are significant differences among brands on an attribute, you might even supply the consumer with a decision making rule such as if when you're deciding among competing brands, then and use the attribute as a criterion. One determine an attribute that's becoming increasingly important for many consumers, is product authenticity. So for example, the J Peterman company clothing catalogs tell stories about the apparel that they sell.

And upscale grocery stores like Whole Foods provide a great amount of detail about the specific farms where produce and meat were raised. Consumers really value that kind of information today. And it turns out that there are several components of authenticity that they consider. One is heritage, that is the genealogy of the product, if you will, where it came from, what its bloodline is the farm where the chicken was raised, etc. Another is sincerity. The extent to which the company has a history of saying what it means and meaning what it says.

And the third is a long standing commitment to quality. So we see a lot of these components are at least one or two of them. Really popping up in a lot of marketing campaigns today as consumers increasingly come to value, these determinant attributes. For example, New Balance describes its main factory using these words. Built in 1945. The depot street building is the workplace of almost 400 Associates.

Each pair of shoes they produce is a proud work of craftsmanship that carries a little bit of the long history. That is the town and its people. The takeaway is something I've already stressed in earlier sections and that is, if your brand has a story to tell, then tell it. Consumers really want to know if you have an authentic product and a really valuable story to tell. So don't hide your light under a bushel.