Commonly Underweighted and Overweighted Considerations in Consumer Choice.

9798607320287

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2019

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Traditional theories of choice assume that consumers know and consider all relevant inputs before arriving at a decision. Decades of behavioral research, however, has shown that consumers have limited attentional and processing resources, and will therefore selectively focus on certain factors during a decision while ignoring others that may be relevant as well. My dissertation examines two factors that are relevant to value judgments that consumers typically underweight, and one that is less relevant to value judgments that consumers typically overweight. I explore how preferences are affected when these factors are considered versus not, as well as the process by which incorporating these considerations into a decision can affect choice. In Essay 1, I look at how thinking about other ways to spend one’s money affects the decision to buy a target item. Past research has broadly explored how increasing the salience of outside options (i.e., alternatives not immediately available in the choice set) influences purchase decisions, but whether and how the type of alternative considered systematically affects buying behavior remains an open question. Ten studies find that relative to considering alternatives that are similar to the target, considering dissimilar alternatives leads to a greater decrease in purchase intent for the target. When consumers consider a dissimilar alternative, a competing non-focal goal is activated, which decreases the perceived importance of the focal goal served by the target option. Consistent with this proposed mechanism, the relative importance of the focal goal versus the non-focal goal mediates the effect of alternative type on purchase intent, and the effect attenuates when the focal goal is shielded from activation of competing goals. In Essay 2, I study situations in which consumers choose among goods that vary in price and features. In these situations, people often evaluate the differences between options without sufficiently attending to the duration over which they will own or use the product. As a result, people tend to underestimate the additional value derived from superior features that comes from use over time. Four studies test our main proposition that people will thus be more likely to choose higher-priced options with superior features when they are prompted to consider the duration of use before their purchase decision. Consistent with our proposed account, I show that people’s preference for a higher-priced option does not vary with the length of time they expect to use the product, unless they are first prompted to consider duration. Further, contrary to alternative accounts, I show that such prompts do not affect preference for products with superior features that are used either for a short period of time or infrequently, and thus the use over time feels subjectively low. Finally, in Essay 3, I identify a factor that consumers often overweight, which makes consumers less likely to opt for the good that provides them with the most value: the pain of paying. While standard frameworks posit that consumers should both choose and pay more for an option that they value more than the alternatives, I instead demonstrate a novel preference inconsistency that arises because the pain of paying that consumers experience varies depending on what they buy. Although an option may offer more consumption utility and consumers thus prefer it when offered for free, the greater pain of paying for it may cause this preference to reverse when a monetary payment is involved in the decision. For instance, consumers may value Wi-Fi in their hotel room more than a hotel breakfast and therefore choose Wi-Fi when offered both for free, but because they find Wi-Fi more painful to purchase, they would not be willing to pay as much for it or would be less likely to choose it at a given price. In support of pain of paying underlying the inconsistencies in the pattern of preferences elicited under choice-for-free versus payment tasks, I show that such inconsistencies are attenuated when consumers use less psychologically painful forms of payment and when the goods in the choice set are similarly painful to purchase.Across the essays in my dissertation, I seek to understand the considerations that may or may not be salient during a purchase decision, and how increasing or decreasing these considerations may shift choices, ideally towards alternatives that provide more consumption utility. My findings are relevant to marketers constructing choice sets, webpages, marketing communications or pricing structures, as well as to consumers looking to make more optimal decisions.

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English

July 15, 2020

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2019.