Search costs and adaptive consumers: short time delays do not affect choice quality

Sonntag, Axel (2015) Search costs and adaptive consumers: short time delays do not affect choice quality. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 113. 64–79.

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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 such delayed display of information on product choice behavior. This article explores the effect of time delays in a multi-attribute choice laboratory experiment by not providing information immediately when requested but after short time delays. Increasing these waiting times reduced the amount of information looked-up but did not affect choice quality. Higher time delays made decision-makers use more deliberate search processes, whereas low time delays induced inefficient over-searching.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: search costs,time delays,multi-attribute consumer product choice,outcome quality,process tracing,choice-based conjoint analysis,economics and econometrics,management science and operations research ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2000/2002
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 09 Mar 2015 07:32
Last Modified: 21 Oct 2022 00:39
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/52536
DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.02.024

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