Needarousal maybe triggered by: people's unconscious minds (personal identity and aspirations), physicalconditions, and externalsources (social media or a service firms marketing activities)
Information search: Evokedset can be derived from past experience or external sources
Externalsources: social media, online reviews and searches, advertising retail displays, new stories, and recommendations from service personnel, friends, and family
Evaluation of alternativeservices: multi-attribute model to stimulate consumer decision making
Multi-attribute model: holds that consumer use service attributes that are important to them to evaluate and compare the alternative offerings of firms in their consideration sets
Multi-attribute model: each attribute has an importanceweight. A higherweight means that the attribute is more important
Service attributes: searchattributes, experience attributes, and credence attributes
Searchattributes - tangible characteristics, consumer can evaluate before purchase
Experienceattributes - cannot be evaluated before purchase
Credenceattributes - characteristics that customers find hard to evaluate even after consumption
Perceivedrisk is usually greater for services that are high in experience and credence attributes, and first-time users are likely to face greater uncertainty
The harder it is to evaluate a service, the higher is the perceivedriskassociated with the purchasedecision
Types of perceived risk: functional, financial, temporal, physical, psychological, social, and sensory
Functional - unsatisfactory performance outcomes
Financial - monetary loss, unexpected cost
Temporal - wastingtime, consequences of delays
Physical - personalinjury or damage to possessions
Psychological - personalfears and emotions
Social - how others think and react
Sensory - unwantedeffects on any of the five senses
The perceived risks are low, the alternatives are clear, and they have been used before, the characteristics are easilyunderstood
Serviceexpectations are formed during the search and decisionmakingprocess, and they are heavily shaped by informationsearch and evaluationalternatives
Evaluation of alternative services: multiattributemodel, serviceattributes, perceived risk, serviceexpectation, and purchasedecision