Question

4a. A customer searching for an SUV is trying to decide what to buy. She decides to limit
her options by using the following strategy. The car must be a Honda or a Toyota because
the customer believes that they have the highest quality. Which decision making heuristics
is applied on this scenario. Justify your answer and give examples
4b. Some fast-food restaurants offer tasty and convenient food at affordable prices, but in
doing so they contribute to a national obesity epidemic and environmental problems.
Which of the marketing management concept is overlooked by these fast-food restaurants?
Justify your answer

Answer 1

4a. In this case, Decision making heuristic which is used is, Familiarity heuristic, in which a person chooses a product of which he/she is familiar. Rather than searching for other alternatives, they use that only product about which they are known in advance. Maybe this can be because of the knowledge of the product which the consumer already has or they have used that brand or product before.

For example- "A study examining the choice of various models of microwave ovens based on the subjects' familiarity with them showed that high familiarity with the features of microwave ovens allowed for a faster and more confident choice".

In this case, a consumer limits her options to two brands, Honda and Toyota because she believes that they have high quality, and the consumer has knowledge about the product; about the quality of the product. So rather than going in search of the other brands she limits her choice to only two brands so that she can compare easily.

4b. There are total five marketing management concepts-

• Production concept
• Product concept
• Selling concept
• Marketing concept
• Societal marketing concept

In the case given in the question, The marketing management concept which the fast food restaurant overlooked is Societal marketing concept.

This is the concept which holds a company to make its business or company decisions by not only focusing on consumer's wants and their own benefit but also keeping in mind society's long term interests.

Here in the given case, fast food restaurants are offering tasty food to their customers but they are ignoring society's long term interest. As fast food only seems to be tasty and not healthy, too much fast food can lead to serious health issues, it has plenty of saturated fats and most importantly, it has many calories which makes the person fat.

By offering this, the restaurant is contributing to the national obesity epidemic which means that number of people are becoming overweight and obese because of eating fast food which is causing long term medical illness such as chronic diseases and disability.

On the other hand, this restaurant is also creating many environmental problems such as it is highly dependent on natural resources such as water, land and feed for livestock, the animal agriculture which is involved in creating fast food products is a biggest contributor to environmental issues.

According to Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR), three ways in which fast food restaurant is harmful for the environment are-

• Use of land
• Consumption of water
• Emission of greenhouse gases

These are the problems which the fast food restaurant is overlooking.