How Consumers Assess Product's Features?: A Case Study of Product Features of Smartphone

摘要

Assessing product features is often a multiple criteria decision-making problem. Consumers may mentally link related product features to simplify the decision making process. This study tests the above idea by using the case study of consumers assessing the product features of smartphones. Our analysis revealed that this is the case and bi-directional relationship may exist between product features. This has implications for new technology features such as NFC and its associated application (e-wallet). New product features need to entrench themselves as a collective part of the product by "locking" (linking) themselves to other existing and more established features. Other implications arising from the analysis are also discussed.