consumer choice

Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper addresses the constructive nature of consumer decision making. The central phenomenon is that consumers often do not have well-defined, stable preferences stored in memory, but instead construct them “on the fly” during the decision-making process.

Main Topic or Phenomenon Addressed This paper examines how consumer choice between hedonic and utilitarian goods is influenced by the nature of the decision task - specifically whether consumers are deciding which item to acquire versus which item to give up (forfeit).

Main Topic or Phenomenon Addressed This paper examines how adding an asymmetrically dominated alternative (a “decoy”) to a choice set can systematically alter consumer preferences, specifically increasing the probability of choosing the item that dominates the decoy.

Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how people make probability judgments and predictions under uncertainty, focusing on the systematic errors that occur when individuals rely on intuitive heuristic principles rather than normative statistical reasoning.