This paper uses introspection and deconstruction as tools to improve understanding of how decisions to purchase cars are made and how a person's preferences evolve in the long run. It is based on a much longer, downloadable account of experience with 18 cars over a 30-year period that involves...

Marketing science seeks to prescribe better marketing strategies (advertising, product development, pricing, etc.). To do so we rely on models of consumer decisions grounded in empirical observations. Field experience suggests that recognition-based heuristics help consumers to choose which...