Robert Zeithammer, Lucas Stich, Martin Spann, Gerald Häubl
{"title":"Strange Case of Dr. Bidder and Mr. Entrant: Consumer Preference Inconsistencies in Costly Price Offers","authors":"Robert Zeithammer, Lucas Stich, Martin Spann, Gerald Häubl","doi":"10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.08.006","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Consumers make price offers to sellers in a variety of domains, such as when buying cars or houses or when bidding in auctions for airline upgrades, art, or collectibles. Submitting an offer typically entails administrative, waiting, and opportunity costs. Making such costly price offers involves two intertwined decisions—in addition to determining how much to offer, consumers must also decide whether to make an offer in the first place. We examine the impact of offer-submission costs on consumer behavior using a series of incentive-compatible experiments. Our findings reveal a preference inconsistency, whereby the preferences implied by one of the decisions do not align with the preferences implied by the other. In particular, potential buyers enter more often than their offer amounts would predict based on standard economic models. This preference inconsistency is robust to two interventions designed to help consumers make offer-amount and entry decisions—(1)the provision of interactive-feedback decision aids and (2)the sequencing of the two sub-decisions in the normative order. Neither of these interventions resolves the inconsistency. Instead, the patterns of results suggest that consumers approach the offer-amount and entry decisions as if they were . We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of offer-submission interfaces, as well as for econometric attempts to infer consumer preferences from offer and bidding data.","PeriodicalId":48298,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Research in Marketing","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Research in Marketing","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.08.006","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Consumers make price offers to sellers in a variety of domains, such as when buying cars or houses or when bidding in auctions for airline upgrades, art, or collectibles. Submitting an offer typically entails administrative, waiting, and opportunity costs. Making such costly price offers involves two intertwined decisions—in addition to determining how much to offer, consumers must also decide whether to make an offer in the first place. We examine the impact of offer-submission costs on consumer behavior using a series of incentive-compatible experiments. Our findings reveal a preference inconsistency, whereby the preferences implied by one of the decisions do not align with the preferences implied by the other. In particular, potential buyers enter more often than their offer amounts would predict based on standard economic models. This preference inconsistency is robust to two interventions designed to help consumers make offer-amount and entry decisions—(1)the provision of interactive-feedback decision aids and (2)the sequencing of the two sub-decisions in the normative order. Neither of these interventions resolves the inconsistency. Instead, the patterns of results suggest that consumers approach the offer-amount and entry decisions as if they were . We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of offer-submission interfaces, as well as for econometric attempts to infer consumer preferences from offer and bidding data.
期刊介绍:
The International Journal of Research in Marketing is an international, double-blind peer-reviewed journal for marketing academics and practitioners. Building on a great tradition of global marketing scholarship, IJRM aims to contribute substantially to the field of marketing research by providing a high-quality medium for the dissemination of new marketing knowledge and methods. Among IJRM targeted audience are marketing scholars, practitioners (e.g., marketing research and consulting professionals) and other interested groups and individuals.