MATHEMATICAL-MODELS OF BRAND CHOICE BEHAVIOR

A critical review of recent developments in the single-stage and two-stage models of brand choice behavior is provided. The rich and complex history of development of choice models is organized via the two fundamental principles that drive most of the literature on single-stage choice models. The first principle of utility maximization has its roots in economic theory and it led to models such as the independent multinomial logit model (McFadden, 1976). The other principle of attribute-based sequential elimination has originated in psychology. Tversky's (1972) Elimination-By-Aspects model is a prime example of the models based on the second principle. The recent two-stage models of brand choice behavior (Gensch, 1987; Manrai and Andrews, 1994) use an attribute-based sequential elimination principle in the first stage to obtain a smaller consideration set from a full feasible set of brands and a utility maximizing logit model in the second stage to select a single from the reduced consideration set. We also provide conclusions and directions for future research.