The Learning (And Not) of Effort and Accuracy Tradeoffs

When making decisions, consumers balance their desire for accuracy with their desire to conserve mental effort. This assumption pervades the consumer behavior literature. Despite its ubiquity, no research has examined the manner in which consumers come to learn the optimal balance of effort and accu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Larson, Jeffrey S
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Consumer behavior
Consumers
Decision making
Studies
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:When making decisions, consumers balance their desire for accuracy with their desire to conserve mental effort. This assumption pervades the consumer behavior literature. Despite its ubiquity, no research has examined the manner in which consumers come to learn the optimal balance of effort and accuracy for a given decision. By examining this dynamic process, the current research demonstrates that consumers insufficiently adjust original effort level when explicit changes to the task are made. This bias is significant because it implies that consumers are not as adaptive as previously thought. Three studies demonstrate the bias and show the unique contribution of three causal mechanisms.
ISSN:0098-9258