Superfluous Choices and the Persistence of Preference

Superfluous choices are unnecessary choice steps that could be removed without affecting the final choice context and outcome. They are introduced in this article in order to study the mere effects of consumer participation. Superfluous choices have no immediate impact on the chosen option but strongly increase consumers' propensity to persist with the same option on future choice occasions. Four experiments that isolate and investigate this indirect effect and its moderators highlight the impact of consumer participation that derives from a perception of greater deliberation and fluency in decision making. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..