When the eyes say buy: visual fixations during hypothetical consumer choice improve prediction of actual purchases

Taisuke Imai (), Min Jeong Kang () and Colin Camerer ()
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Taisuke Imai: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Min Jeong Kang: California Institute of Technology

Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2019, vol. 5, issue 1, No 10, 112-122

Abstract: Abstract Consumers typically overstate their intentions to purchase products, compared to actual rates of purchases, a pattern called “hypothetical bias”. In laboratory choice experiments, we measure participants’ visual attention using mousetracking or eye-tracking, while they make hypothetical as well as real purchase decisions. We find that participants spent more time looking both at price and product image prior to making a real “buy” decision than making a real “don’t buy” decision. We demonstrate that including such information about visual attention improves prediction of real buy decisions. This improvement is evident, although small in magnitude, using mousetracking data, but is not evident using eye-tracking data.

Keywords: Mousetracking; Eye-tracking; Hypothetical bias; Prediction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D12 D90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1007/s40881-019-00071-3

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