Buying Online - A Characterization of Rational Buying Procedures
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In decision theory, an agent chooses from a set of alternatives. When buying online, alternatives are "represented" in one form of another. For instance, online search results are lists of items, wine menus are often lists of lists (grouped by type or country), and online shopping often involves browsing or filtering items which can be viewed as navigating a tree. An agent can make use of the structure of the representation when choosing. For instance, in the case of a list he can use the order in which alternatives are represented. In this paper we model general representations and procedures operating on them. We then ask which properties procedures have to fulfill such that their choices can equivalently be understood as a maximization of a rational preference relation when representations are ignored. We fully characterize such procedures and establish that they are intimately linked to well known properties such as Sen's α. What is more, we show that there exist purely procedural properties that are sufficient for a rationalization.
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