Stimulus Characteristics and Attraction Effect: Role of qualitative and quantitative attribute values

Pronobesh Banerjee ()
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Pronobesh Banerjee: Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode

No 357, Working papers from Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode

Abstract: Though attraction effect, when the choice share of an existing alternative increases with the introduction of an inferior decoy, is well-established in the literature, recent replication efforts have challenged its robustness. In this research, we demonstrate stimulus meaningfulness as a rationale for the lack of replication. In two studies, we show that when quantitative values are used attraction effect results from a lack of meaningfulness of the stimulus ratings; and attraction effect is eliminated when meaningful qualitative descriptions replace the quantitative values. We further demonstrate that such differences—attraction effect versus no attraction effect, emanate from a change in choice strategy from a choice simplifying non-compensatory decision making process, when stimulus meaningfulness is not clear, to a more engaging and normatively convincing compensatory processes with meaningful description of stimuli.

Keywords: Attraction effect; non-compensatory decision making; compensatory decision making; stimulus meaningfulness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2020-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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