What is the Psychoanalytic theory of consumer decision making process?

Steps included in the basic decision-making process?

• I have to write this mini-essay, nothing too long. But I'm a little confused in how to answer it. Enumerate all of the steps included in the basic decision-making process and, in your own words, describe what is occurring at each step. Be certain to include the role of those steps when each may not be fully evident as in programmed or supposedly “automatic” decisions. Also thoroughly explain and evaluate the role of follow-up in the decision-making process. The steps I've come up with is research, model building and simulation, Queueing theory and game theory. I'm not exactly sure if these are correct or which examples should be used - can you please assist?

• Answer:

  It would help a lot of you indicated what kind of a class this is for. For example, if this is for a neurobiology class the answers may literally contradict the ones an economics professor is looking for (and the neurobiology answers are more likely to be correct :D ). In any case, queueing theory and game theory are tools for analyzing certain kind of decisions; they aren't steps per se. For example, game theory is what you use if there's at least one other player with objectives different from yours. Queueing theory is what you use if -- well, if you have a queueing problem. ;)