Will You Buy a Surprise? Gender Differences in the Purchase of Surprise Offerings

Abstract

In the present paper, we conceptualize and investigate customers’ preference for and responses to surprise offerings – products and services for which one or more core attributes are uncertain and unknown to the buyer at the time of purchase. We propose that an important motivation that influences choices between a surprise and a certain offering is the desire for agency over the purchase outcome, revealed by choosing a high in certainty alternative. Using gender as a proxy for chronic agentic orientation, we find that men (who have higher agentic proclivities) are less likely to opt for a surprise offering and do not respond as positively to the experience of such an offering as women (who have lower agentic proclivities) do. We examine data from two companies (car rental and travel services), an online product catalog, and several field and lab studies, thus providing robust evidence of the framework across multiple product categories and participant populations. Importantly, we conclude with a managerial roadmap that delineates the ways in which marketers can offer surprise offerings more fruitfully.