Habitual decision making
A decision making that involves little or no
amount of research or analysis done on the part of decision maker. It is characterized by inflexible and fast choice selection, leading to a decision which can also be called as routine or automatic response to problem at hand.
It indicates that there was little or no conscious effort on the decision-maker's part to reach to a certain conclusion while deciding what decision to make. It suggests that decision taken is based on pre-established habits without analyzing the short and long-term consequences of all the available options.
This behavior is seen is mostly in consumer's purchasing behavior. Consumer's these days are pressed with time as they have a lot of things on their plate and they hardly get a chance to complete all their work. It is probably one of the main reasons why business like home delivery, online shopping, or even online ticket booking came into picture. People want to simplify their decision making process since they don't feel that wasting too much time in deciding where to buy grocery is worth their time. Loyalty towards a brand or a store is developed because of that. People don't switch to other brands or stores unless the amount of savings achieved as a result is significant. Word of mouth from personal sources like friend and family also leads to habitual decision making.
Dangers of habitual decision making
Even managers and authorities in a business organization fell prey to habitual decision making. Often we see a lot of biases in favor of those options which had been tried before. However, it may prove to be fatal in a dynamic environment, and ever changing and evolving market. For example, many a time you see movie makers trying to follow trend set by other filmmakers without really understanding the pulse of their audience and demand of the market. Another example will be managers being biased towards workers from a certain college or background. It can prove fatal for an organization that sells designer apparels deciding the next in-thing on the basis of what their buyers appreciated the last time.
