Choice, consideration sets, and attribute filters

Abstract

It is well known that decision makers do not always consider all of the available alternatives when making a choice. When the alternatives have attributes, these attributes provide a natural way to form the consideration set. I assume a procedure in which the decision maker uses the relative ranking of the alternatives on each attribute to reduce the size of the choice set. I provide a characterization of the procedure and illustrate how to identify the underlying preference and consideration set. The model explains certain choice anomalies such as the attraction and the compromise effects.