What is the difference between core beliefs and secondary be

What is the difference between core beliefs and secondary beliefs? Give an example of each from your personal experience and how have these beliefs affected in making a purchasing decision.

Solution

Core beliefs and values are declared in family and friendship relations, in social conventions and rites, in social institutions and in social order itself. They take a long time to modify since they are inseparably linked to family upbringing, the education system, national history, religion and a variety of other institutional phenomena.

Secondary beliefs and values, on the other hand, are less durable and more situationally determined as they are more likely to vary within society and to change over time and can be recognizable in sub-cultures within the society.

For example, maintaining integrity in all types of transactions (financial/ social) is a core belief which is very difficult to change. But believing that a student will always join a university degree after his/ her high-school education is a secondary belief which may change after seeing many other options of today e.g. degree apprenticeship, school leaving programs and so on.

When our core belief is integrity in all transactions, we will maintain that in our purchasing decisions as well. We will keep the quotes of each vendor undisclosed for the other, provide all vendors equal opportunity to participate, will not be motivated by personal goals or conflict of interest. But consider an example where a person works for a company where it is customary to select the low-cost bidder. The person will have secondary belief that decision should be made primarily based on bid value. Such belief may change when he/ she joins another company (say, a government department) where public service is more important than making a cost-effective deal. His/ her secondary belief will change and he will eventually accept that reliability of the supplier can be a primary objective of the purchaser and not the cost.