Skip the abstract- it's too obtuse- the paper itself is pretty readable. Non-compensatory: when a customer is making a decision, and no combination of additional features make up for a lack of the feature they really want (e.g. it doesn't matter how cool the phone is if I can't play mp3s). Versus compensatory (e.g., well, news.ycombinator doesn't use ajax, but the fact that it's focused, spam free, and easy on the eyes makes up for it...)

You can translate the concepts to simple additive math and work from there.

Brilliant to be able to predict peoples' decision between hundreds of competing products based on answering just a few questions.