With the ever-increasing number of options from which consumers can choose, many decisions are done in stages. Whether using decision tools to sort, screen, and eliminate options, or intuitively trying to reduce the complexity of a choice, consumers often reach a decision by making sequential,...

A great deal of research in consumer decision-making and social-cognition has explored consumers' attempts to simplify choices by bolstering their tentative choice candidate and/or denigrating the other alternatives. The present research investigates a diametrically opposed process, whereby...

Central consumers — consumers with many ties in their social network — can be influential within their communities. Marketers keenly target them and expect to profit from their word-of-mouth. However, does the central consumer indeed shape the group's preference, or alternatively, gravitate...

Decision making often entails conflict. In many situations, the symptoms of such decisional conflict are conspicuous. This paper explores an important and unexamined question: How does observing someone else experiencing decisional conflict impact our own preferences? The authors show that...

The notion that effort and hard work yield desired outcomes is ingrained in many cultures and affects our thinking and behavior. However, could valuing effort complicate our lives? In the present article, the authors demonstrate that individuals with a stronger tendency to link effort with...

Individuals regularly face adversity in the pursuit of goals that require ongoing commitment. Whether or not individuals persist in the face of adversity greatly affects the likelihood that they will achieve their goals. We argue that a seemingly minor change in the individual’s original...

To date, research on no-choice options has primarily examined the conditions that foster choice deferral, thus focusing on the frequency with which consumers select the no-choice option. in this article, the authors argue that even if the no-choice option is not selected, its mere presence in...

Scientific inquiry often advances in triadic waves of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. We concur with Simonson [Simonson, I., (2008). Will I Like a "Medium" Pillow: Another Look at Constructed and Inherent Preferences. Journal of Consumer Psychology, this issue.] that BDT's antithesis of...

This chapter provides a behavioral decision perspective on the implications of intertemporal choice research for retirement savings. In particular, we focus on two cognitive mechanisms explaining how and why future monetary outcomes are discounted: (1) changes in the perception of delayed...

This paper shows evidence for expense neglect in how consumers forecast their future spare money or “financial slack.” Even though people generally think that both their income and expenses will rise in the future, we find that they systematically under-weigh the extent to which their...