Search costs and adaptive consumers: Short time delays do not affect choice quality

Axel Sonntag

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 113, issue C, 64-79

Abstract: Using online price comparison and shopping platforms makes experiencing slow connections, lags and waiting times for information an unfortunate reality. However, little attention has been paid to analyzing the effects of such delayed display of information on product choice behavior. This article explores the effect of time delays in a multi-attribute choice laboratory experiment by not providing information immediately when requested but after short time delays. Increasing these waiting times reduced the amount of information looked-up but did not affect choice quality. Higher time delays made decision-makers use more deliberate search processes, whereas low time delays induced inefficient over-searching.

Keywords: Search costs; Time delays; Multi-attribute consumer product choice; Outcome quality; Process tracing; Choice-based conjoint analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D11 D12 D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115000670
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jeborg:v:113:y:2015:i:c:p:64-79

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.02.024

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().