Emotional Decisions: Tradeoff Difficulty and Coping in Consumer Choice

Decision-making can be difficult and often results in necessary trade-offs, eg. safety versus prices in the purchasing of an automobile. This work provides a model of trade-off difficulty, focusing on its antecedents and consequences. The authors advance a new framework for the integration of the emotional and cognitive aspects of decision-making and argue that consumers perceive and appraise their choices in light of their goals and potential coping strategies.