Another very important concept used to understand mental accounting is that of modified utility function.
In fact, our "utility functions," as economists call them, have not really changed.
The logarithmic utility function occurs for as goes to 0.
The consumer's utility function ranks each package in the consumption set.
However, it is possible for preferences not to be representable by a utility function.
The software will produce utility functions for each of the features.
Each has as arguments the set of utility functions for everyone in the society.
The same functional form arises as a utility function in consumer theory.
Any number of algorithms may be used to estimate utility functions.
Note that the result holds regardless of your utility function.