Research suggests that individuals mentally track the costs and benefits of a consumer transaction for the purpose of reconciling those costs and benefits on completion of the transaction (Prelec and Loewenstein 1998; Thaler 1980,1985). In transactions where costs precede benefits, this can lead to...

Past expenses have been shown to influence future spending behavior by depleting available budgets. However, a prerequisite for this relationship is the accurate recall of past payments and the experiencing of the full aversive impact associated with them. This article shows that the use of...

Money illusion research shows that the nominal (face) value of money affects consumer perceptions of its real value. Recent mixed findings on consumer valuations in different currencies suggest that the underlying anchoring and adjustment processes are complex. We develop a framework to identify...

We examine situations in which (a) consumers choose between options that vary on two attributes that are different in their evaluability and (b) the ranges for both attributes change simultaneously. As the ranges widen, the range effect makes perceptual differences on both attributes look...

The duration heuristic refers to the tendency to evaluate services based on their duration rather than on their content. We propose that consumers rely on the duration heuristic because it simplifies the evaluation process. In particular, the duration heuristic is most likely to be seen when the...

Queues are a ubiquitous phenomenon. This research investigates consumers' affective experiences in a queue and their decisions to leave the queue after having spent some time in it (reneging). In particular, we find in our first two studies that, as the number of people behind increases, the...