practice8-q6

Consumers judge the value of a product and determine whether they will purchase it or not depending on the answers they receive to certain questions. These questions are always about the key qualities of a product. As advertisers it is essential for us to know these questions. So today, we’re going to study the two most common kinds of questions consumers ask.

The first are intrinsic. These ask about the internal qualities and characteristics of a product. They deal with the physical characteristics of a good. For example, think of a customer walking into a grocery store to purchase orange juice. He sees a variety of orange juice that he must choose from. He asks himself an intrinsic question about the internal quality of the juice to help: which has the best flavor? After scanning the information contained on the labels of each carton of orange juice, he finds one that emphasizes how its orange juice tastes like real oranges, so he purchases that one based on the answer he read to the intrinsic question he asked.

The second kind is extrinsic. It doesn’t deal with the physical characteristics of the product, but rather how the product is presented. Let’s illustrate this with the same example. Say that the man still wants to buy orange juice, but this time he bases his decision on an extrinsic question: which one looks like it has the best quality? He examines the packaging of the different containers. He sees that some are in plastic bottles, others in cardboard cartons, and still others in glass. He believes that glass is a more elegant and high quality packaging material, so he assumes that the orange juice in it is of higher quality too, so he purchases it, choosing based on an extrinsic question.