Conventional wisdom suggests that more concrete and detailed information is helpful in evaluating new products. The current research, however, demonstrates that when consumers use visualization to evaluate new products, the value of concrete versus abstract visualization is dependent on the...

We present five studies supporting our strategic memory protection theory. When people make decisions about experiences to consume over time, they treat their memories of previous experiences as assets to be protected. The first two studies demonstrate that people tend to avoid situations that...

Consumers often search for and choose from ordered sets, commonly from options listed from best to worst. Normatively, such declining orderings maximize expected value from search and should lead to more positive evaluations of the experience compared to searching improving orderings. We...

Research in intertemporal choice has been done in a variety of contexts, yet there is a remarkable consensus that future outcomes are discounted (or undervalued) relative to immediate outcomes. In this paper, we (a) review some of the key findings in the literature, (b) critically examine and...

This article examines how dynamic changes in information cost structure and time preferences affect consumers' search and switching behavior over time and lead to lock-in. The information cost structure is conceptualized as a trade-off of initial setup costs and ongoing usage costs. Lock-in is...

Preferences inferred from choice are more likely to favor the alternative that is superior with respect to the prominent (most important or salient) attribute than are preferences inferred from matching (direct tradeoff) judgments. This prominence effect violates standard models of rational...