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Abstract
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There are 2 polar schools of thought regarding the existence of preferences. The economics tradition is based on the assumption of existing preferences. The emerging constructive processing approach assumes preferences are constructed based on the task and context factors present during choice or preference elicitation. Most researchers believe in a middle ground in which consumers construct their preferences when they are new to a category and eventually develop more stable preferences with experience in a domain. This research was designed to bridge the gap between these 2 schools of thought by understanding the process by which preferences are learned and developed over time. Specifically, we investigated the impact of several dimensions of experience (effort, choice, and experience) on preference stability.
RESULTS revealed that the type of experience and its corresponding effort had a large impact on the process of preference development. Study 1 demonstrated that by exposing participants to the trade-offs in their environment, their preferences developed and stabilized most rapidly. In addition, the act of making a choice (Study 2) and repeated choices (Study 3) both led to increased preference stability as indicated by measures of objective and subjective preference stability. Consider the decision process of a soon-to-be parent who is in the market for a dazzling array of products that he has never considered before. He decides that the first purchase is going to be a baby stroller. As he evaluates strollers, he no- tices that some of the strollers are quite heavy, whereas others are rather light. Thus, the soon-to-be parent learns that the weight of the stroller is one differentiating attribute. He could infer that a heavier stroller is more stable and thus favor the heavy strollers. Instead, he may infer that a lighter stroller will be more eas- ily maneuvered and thus prefer the lighter stroller. Although he is not sure whether to get a light or heavy stroller, he decides to look at all of them and then decide based on weight and many other attributes (e.g., appearance, ease of fold- ing, price). Our consumer, therefore, will have a large consideration set and will be fairly uncertain about how much importance to place on various attributes when making the purchase decision. Now compare this decision process with the decision process of an experienced parent. She previously owned a heavy stroller and is certain that a lightweight stroller is the way to go. Not only is she certain that less weight is better than heavy, but she also feels that weight is the most important attribute. She evaluates only lightweightstrollersand as a consequencehas a much narrower consideration set. In addition, while making the purchase decision she consistently places a great deal of importanceon the weight attribute. There are two key points when contrasting the decision processes previously described. First,a consumer with less experience in a product category should consider a wider range of products than a more experienced consumer. Second, a consumer with more experience in a product category should understand the product domain better. This understanding should lead to better identificationof the attributesthat are important for the decision; a better identificationof the direction of the correlation or relation between the attributes and overall satisfaction with the product; and finally, a better identification of the importance to place on the attribute when making the purchase decision (West, Brown, & Hoch, 1996). In the baby stroller example, the new consumer identifies weight as an important attribute, tries to estimate the direction of the relation between weight and happiness with the stroller, and grapples with how important weight is in relation to the other attributes associated with the stroller. On the other hand, the experienced consumer has consolidated their preferences to the point where there is less variance around the range of acceptable alternatives.The goal of this research is to examine the consolidation process. It is clear that often preferences do consolidate over time; in fact, it is this process of preference consolidation over time that is the main focus of this article. |