Consumer Preferences

Consumer preferences represent the building block for assessing the value of any good or service relative to another. Once determined, a consumer may or may not wish to reveal a willingness to pay for an item given the asking price. Of course, assessing value is not always straightforward for the consumer. It can be an amalgamation of economic, aesthetic, and moral characteristics that are uniquely determined and weighted by each individual consumer. Of course, there may be a tension among those characteristics. As a result, a consumer’s preferences could be highly flexible given changes in both his or her and society’s outlooks. For example, the thought of purchasing a large sport utility vehicle may satisfy a personal preference for a powerful and spacious vehicle; but ...