Choose as much as you wish: freedom cues in the marketplace help consumers feel more satisfied with what they choose and improve customer experience

Barbara Fasolo, Raffaella Misuraca and Elena Reutskaja

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Consumer satisfaction and customer experience are key predictors of an organization's future market growth, long-term customer loyalty, and profitability but are hard to maintain in marketplaces with abundance of choice. Building on self-determination theory, we experimentally test a novel intervention that leverages consumer need for autonomy. The intervention is a message called a "freedom cue" (FC) which makes it salient that consumers can "choose as much as they wish." A 4-week field experiment in a sporting gear store establishes that FCs lead to greater consumer satisfaction compared to when the store displays no FC. A large (N = 669) preregistered process-tracing experiment run with a consumer panel and a global e-commerce company shows that FCs at point-of-sale improve consumer satisfaction and customer experience compared to an equivalent message that does not make freedom to choose any amount salient. Perceived freedom mediates the effect. FCs do not change the time spent or clicks on the website overall but do change the focus of the choice process. FCs lead to greater focus on what is chosen than on what is not chosen. We discuss practical implications for organizations and future research in consumer choice.

Keywords: freedom cue; customer experience; consumer satisfaction; field study; process tracing; IESE Business School (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2024-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-inv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 1, March, 2024, 30(1), pp. 156 – 168. ISSN: 1076-898X

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