To buy or how much to buy? Partition dependence in purchase-quantity decisions

Nader T. Tavassoli () and Matteo Visentin
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Nader T. Tavassoli: London Business School
Matteo Visentin: Google Cloud Platform

Marketing Letters, 2022, vol. 33, issue 2, No 1, 177-188

Abstract: Abstract Four studies demonstrate that people are more likely to buy (but not to buy more) when directly asked how much to buy in response to a set of purchase quantities (0, 1, 2 … n) than when first asked whether to buy in response to a seemingly innocuous yes/no purchase-interest question. This finding is explained in terms of response-scale partitioning. A purchase-quantity scale has a single negative (0) and multiple (n) positive response options. In contrast, a dichotomous yes/no purchase-interest question has an equal proportion of negative (“no”) and positive (“yes”) response options, the latter of which subsumes all positive quantity options into one partition. Ascertaining purchase interest using a single negative and multiple positive response options (“no,” “mildly,” “somewhat,” “likely,” “very,” and “definitely”) eliminated the effect.

Keywords: Choice architecture; Response scales; Partition dependence; Question-behavior effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/s11002-021-09596-2

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