3.2. Product selection
The product categories used in the case study were selected based on availability and familiarity to con- sumers. The need for variance in the different risks associated with the purchasing decision, functional, financial and psychosocial risk, guided us in selecting the product categories. Wine, toothpaste, potato chips, and canned tomatoes were chosen. The categories were classifiedasfollows:The‘winecategory’wasselectedto represent the highest psychosocial risk, as it has the highest level of usage visibility; it also reflects high functional risk, because of the difficulty to produce wine and the physical consequences of the consumption of an inferior wine. It also represents a product category with a very-high-quality variance. Toothpaste carries med- ium psychosocial risk since it is not often used in public situations; nonetheless, no one wants to be associated with bad/cheap hygiene products. Moreover, it scores high in functional risk because of health related consequences, and there is significant quality variance in the category. The ‘potato chips’ category can be classified as inexpensive (low financial risk), easy to produce (low functional risk) and as having low to medium psychosocial risk. And finally, the ‘canned tomatoes’ category can be seen as the simplest one with a low level of visibility (psychosocial risk) and very low level of functional risk—easy production and hardly any quality variance among brands.