Research has demonstrated that assortment size can influence whether consumers make a choice, but could it also influence what they choose? Five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult, it leads people to select options that are easier to...

Consumers often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend....

Why do people sometimes struggle with decisions that once seemed relatively simple? This research suggests that comparing options leads people to lose sight of which decision attributes are important. Although the difference between important and unimportant attributes is often clear in the...

Car purchases are among the largest and most expensive purchases consumers ever make. While functional and economic concerns are obviously important, we examine whether social influence also plays a role. Using a Bayesian probability model along with data on over 1.6 million cars sold over a...

People consume not only physical goods but also social interaction, and consumer choices depend on both intrinsic motivations (preferences for consumption) and extrinsic motivations (how choices impact social interactions). In this paper, we study how social identity, preference, and utility...

Why are certain articles more impactful than others? Citations are seen as an objective measure of scholarship and are used to determine everything from hiring and tenure to journal prestige and grant funding. But might mere article order (i.e., appearance in a journal issue) bias the number of...

We propose that the variety a brand offers can influence brand quality perceptions, and consequently, affect brand choice, even when the available option set is held constant. Specifically, brands that offer greater variety of compatible (i.e., focused and internally consistent) options are...

This research examines how identity-based interventions can improve consumer health. Results of laboratory and field experiments reveal that associating risky health behaviors with a social identity people do not want to signal can contaminate the behaviors and lead consumers to make healthier...

People often diverge from members of other social groups: they select cultural tastes (e.g., possessions, attitudes, or behaviors) that distinguish them from outsiders and abandon tastes when outsiders adopt them. But while divergence is pervasive, most research on the propagation of culture is...

We propose that consumers often make choices that diverge from those of others to ensure that they effectively communicate desired identities. Consistent with this identity-signaling perspective, four studies illustrate that consumers are more likely to diverge from majorities, or members of...