Brand choice model selection based on consumers' multicriteria preferences and experts' knowledge

A primary goal in marketing science is to describe, model, and finally predict the behavior of the consumers and their attitudes towards the products that form the market. Multicriteria analysis is a powerful tool in our effort to reveal the preferences of the consumers according to multiple points of view. The use of multiattribute utility theory along with models of consumer behavior permits the analyst to explore and describe different patterns in consumer's decision making by studying the distribution of assigned utilities. The results are converted into simple “if ... then” rules and a knowledge base is constructed. Consequently, the decision maker obtains an additional tool in his/her effort to model in a most efficient manner the environment of the market.