Prior research has demonstrated that actions are regretted more than inactions in the short term. We show that, in limited purchase opportunities-situations where the purchase decision cannot be reversed-not purchasing (inaction) is seen as a loss and is associated with greater short-term regret...

Consumers often search for and choose from ordered sets, commonly from options listed from best to worst. Normatively, such declining orderings maximize expected value from search and should lead to more positive evaluations of the experience compared to searching improving orderings. We...

This article explores the effects of two distinct retail choice architectures—those that organize assortments by attributes and those that organize items by benefits. Relative to attribute-based organizations, benefit-based organizations lead to more abstract construal and heighten similarity...

Recent consumer research suggests that lowering search costs for quality information reduces consumer price sensitivity by creating greater perceived differentiation among brands (e.g., Kaul and Wittink 1995; Lynch and Ariely 2000). We argue that lowering quality search costs by smart agents can...

The literature in economic psychology and quality-of-life studies alludes to a negative relationship between materialism and life satisfaction. In contrast, the macroeconomic literature implies a positive relationship between material consumption and economic growth. That is, materialism may be...

Innovation rejection remains a serious problem for companies introducing new products, as customers may overvalue products they already own and underestimate the innovation's advantage. Choice data from two experiments demonstrate that innovation rejection is determined by (dis)satisfaction with...

Loss aversion can occur in riskless and risky choices. Yet, there is no evidence whether people who are loss averse in riskless choices are also loss averse in risky choices. We measure individual-level loss aversion in riskless choices in an endowment effect experiment by eliciting both WTA and...