Choosing to avoid: coping with negatively emotion-laden consumer decisions
Article Abstract:
This article addresses how consumers resolve decisions involving conflict between attributes linked to highly valued goals, such as an automobile purchase decision requiring determination of how much safety one is willing to sacrifice in order to obtain other benefits. One salient goal for these decisions may be coping with or minimizing the negative emotion generated during decision making. The conceptual framework developed in this article predicts that choosing avoidant options (e.g., the option to maintain the status quo) can satisfy coping goals by minimizing explicit confrontation of negative potential decision consequences and difficult trade-offs. Two experiments demonstrate that reported emotion can be altered by manipulating decision attributes, that the opportunity to choose an avoidant option mitigates levels of reported emotion, and that increasingly emotion-laden decision environments are associated with more choice of avoidant options. Mediation analyses indicate that actual choice of an avoidant option results in less retrospective negative emotion (in experiment 1) and that increased initial negative emotion results in increased choice of avoidant options (in experiment 2). Mediation analyses for experiment 2 also indicate that increased response times mediate avoidant choice, in contrast to explanations of the status quo bias and similar choice phenomena that appeal to decision makers' desires to minimize cognitive effort. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Consumer Research
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0093-5301
Year: 1998
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An experimental examination of the economics of information
Article Abstract:
In 1961 George Stigler published his economics of information (EOI) theory, and based on the significant EOI assumption of prior abstract notions of marketplace prices and empirical proof, propositions about search actions were created and tested. Evidence supporting the propositions and the EOI is surveyed. Purchasers differ in their capability for tolerance of 'ignorance' when deciding on purchases. It is observed that search cost and search benefit may not be universal. Results indicate that purchasers with weaker beliefs regarding retailer-price images respond more to cost modification, and search more than buyers with strong beliefs.
Publication Name: Journal of Consumer Research
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0093-5301
Year: 1986
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