Navigation Strategies and Heuristics in Consumer Search

The ability to search is an essential cognitive skill that underlies many human activities, from survival in primordial environments to finding good deals in modern economic markets. The present research uses laboratory-based experiments to explore the strategies and information that consumers use to navigate as they search for products. In Chapter 1, we identify three abstract principles for goal-directed search: value-based search, proximity-based search, and socially-based search. Value-driven strategies rely on inferences about distributions of value to guide and terminate search. Proximity-driven strategies rely on the spatial or conceptual layout of the environment to make decisions about where to search and when to stop. Finally, socially-driven strategies rely on information about the actions and outcomes for similar co-specifics. In Chapter 2, we examine how consumers navigate and stop when placed in an experimental search environment where they have differing expectations about products. We compare participants’ navigation and stopping choices to both the optimal model and to simple heuristic models to better understand what information consumers use and how they are using it. We find that consumers often use rational principles to navigate but may also use cognitively simpler strategies. In Chapter 3, we examine the impact that environment factors have on search strategies. We examine how increasing the number of choices impacts navigation patterns, independent of the information typically integrated into formal models. Furthermore, we look at how spatial layouts of products can change the information used to navigate and stop. In these studies, we compare participants’ navigation choices to both value-based and spatially-based strategies. We find that consumers switch between value-based and proximity-based strategies depending on the associated costs and benefits. In Chapter 4, we examine learning in two studies in which participants repeatedly search in the same environment and receive global feedback about their success. We examine how strategy use changes as participants gain experience. We find that consumers learn early in a search by navigating towards locations with more potential without increasing the length of their search. Finally, in Chapter 5, we conclude by considering practical applications of our findings and pointing to directions for future research.