Nudges Increase Choosing but Decrease Consuming: Longitudinal Studies of the Decoy, Default, and Compromise Effects

Evan Polman and Sam J Maglio

Journal of Consumer Research, 2024, vol. 51, issue 3, 542-551

Abstract: Research in marketing, psychology, economics, and decision making has long examined what people choose, when people choose, and why people choose. But almost no research has examined how long people consume their choices. Here, we examined an asymmetry between choosing an option and consuming it. Under the aegis of nudges, we conducted two randomized longitudinal experiments on how long people consumed a choice that was incentivized vis-à-vis a decoy effect, default effect, and compromise effect. We found that these nudges influenced choosing and consuming in opposite directions: Participants were more likely to choose the nudged option; however, they consumed it less compared to participants who chose an identical non-nudged option. Our research thus demonstrates that nudges could lead people to consume a nudged option less after choosing it, illuminating the potential for future research to examine the unexplored area of longitudinal, post-acquisition, post-nudge effects.

Keywords: consuming; product usage; nudges; longitudinal experiments; active consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jcr/ucad081 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:51:y:2024:i:3:p:542-551.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().