Search Costs in Consumer Product Choice: Does Delaying the Provision of Information increase Choice Efficiency?

Axel Sonntag

No 13-05, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

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 delayed provision of information on product choice behavior. In this article, I introduce an information processing model to derive search pattern predictions and test them in a multi-attribute choice laboratory experiment. Information requested during a search process was not provided immediately but after short time delays. Increasing these waiting times reduced the amount of looked-up information but did not affect choice quality. It seems that high time delays nudged decision-makers to think twice about how much and what kind of information should be looked-up, whereas low time delays induced inefficient over-searching. As technological advances are expected to further reduce Internet delay times, the observed change in search behavior could affect the profitability of manufacturers' production and retailers' advertising strategies.

Keywords: search costs; time delays; multi-attribute consumer product choice; outcome quality; choice efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D11 D12 D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/cbess/UEA-CBESS-13-05.pdf main text (application/pdf)

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:uea:wcbess:13-05

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Reception, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cara Liggins ().