Hedonic myopia: Emphasizing hedonic benefits of non-perishable food makes consumers insensitive to expiration dates in food purchase

Kang Jun Choi, He Michael Jia, Jae Young Lee, B. Kyu Kim and Keunwoo Kim

Journal of Business Research, 2022, vol. 138, issue C, 193-202

Abstract: Although the expiration date of non-perishable food only indicates whether the food is still in its peak quality, consumers tend to misinterpret the meaning of the expiration date and thus avoid purchasing near-expiry food. Due to such aversion to food close to expiration dates, a huge amount of non-perishable food is wasted due to being unsold and thus uneaten every year. The current research explores a novel solution to mitigate consumers' aversion to near-expiry non-perishable food at the purchase stage. Drawing on the literature on consumer impatience, we propose a hedonic myopia hypothesis. Specifically, when hedonic (vs. utilitarian) benefits of non-perishable food are emphasized, consumers desire to consume it immediately and disregard delayed consequences. Hence, they become less averse to near-expiry food. We find convergent support for the hedonic myopia hypothesis and the impatience-based mechanism through various methods, including an analysis of actual sales data from an online store, a field experiment, and a randomized controlled experiment. The demonstrated hedonic myopia effect provides important theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: Expiration date; Non-perishable food; Myopia; Hedonic benefits; Utilitarian benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:138:y:2022:i:c:p:193-202

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.09.005

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