Margaret G. Meloy

Predecisional distortion of product information

Two consumer choice experiments reveal distortion of product information. When relatively equivocal information about two hypothetical brands is acquired one attribute at a time, the evaluation of ...

The Goal of Consistency as a Cause of Information Distortion

Why, during a decision between new alternatives, do people bias their evaluations of information to support a tentatively preferred option? The authors test the following 3 decision process goals as the potential drivers of such distortion of information: (a) to reduce the effort of evaluating new information, (b) to increase the separation between alternatives, and (c) to achieve consistency between old and new units of information. Two methods, the nonconscious priming of each goal and assessing the ambient activation levels of multiple goals, reveal that the goal of consistency drives information distortion. Results suggest the potential value of combining these methods in studying the dynamics of multiple, simultaneously active goals.

Leader‐Driven Primacy: Using Attribute Order to Affect Consumer Choice

Leader-driven primacy uses initial product information to install a targeted brand as the early leader in a choice between two brands. Biased evaluation of subsequent attributes builds support for the targeted brand, causing the choice itself to be biased. Study 1 finds evidence of this effect in choices between two equally attractive brands. Study 2 extends the finding to a situation where one brand is inferior and to conditions where participants do not explicitly identify their leader. Study 3 shows how leader-driven primacy can be reduced by encouraging brand-based processing.

Mood-Driven Distortion of Product Information

During the consumer choice process, predecisional distortion is the biased evaluation of new product information to support a tentatively preferred brand. An experiment revealed that creating a good mood by the unexpected gift of a bag of candy doubled the magnitude of this bias. Furthermore, information that seemed to preserve the good mood but disconfirmed the tentative preference (by being positive about the trailing brand) had greater impact than did mood-disrupting, negative information about the leading brand. The results, especially those for the disconfirming information, were compatible with the goal of mood management. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.

Choosing an Inferior Alternative

We show how decision makers can be induced to choose a personally inferior alternative, a strong violation of rational decision making. First, the inferior alternative is installed as the leading option by starting with information that supports this alternative. Then, the decision maker uses the natural process of distorting new information to support whichever alternative is leading. This leader-supporting distortion overcomes the inherent advantages of the superior alternative. The end result is a tendency to choose the self-identified inferior alternative. We trace the choice process to reveal the amount of distortion and its influence on preference. Self-reported awareness of distortion to support the inferior alternative is not related to the amount of distortion. The absence of valid awareness suggests that the manipulation that produces this preference violation is unlikely to be detected and that the distortion is unlikely to be corrected by the decision maker. As expected, given the lack of awareness, final confidence is just as high when the inferior alternative is chosen as when the superior one is. The discussion considers how to prevent an adversary from manipulating ones decisions using this technique.

Monetary Incentives and Mood

Researchers have long debated the methodological necessity of monetary incentives in experimental research. The current work shows that financial incentives not only can fail to improve task performance but also can worsen it. Three studies verify that incentives can elevate mood and that this mood enhancement contributes to worsened task performance. The authors discuss implications for the use of incentives in experimental research.

Consumer Markets for Remanufactured and Refurbished Products

Consumer product returns in the United States are approaching three-hundred billion dollars annually. In the majority of cases, the returned products are perfectly functional convenience returns. Managers have a multi-billion dollar profit opportunity to reuse the products by strategically employing remanufacturing. Yet, remanufacturing has multiple barriers that must be understood and addressed. This article addresses several key managerial issues regarding remanufactured consumer products. First, will consumers buy remanufactured products? Second, will the green consumer segment desire remanufactured products? Third, will remanufactured product sales cannibalize new product sales? Finally, this article provides guidance regarding pricing and cannibalization mitigation strategies.

Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice

How do consumers manage goal conflicts before making a choice? This question was studied by examining emerging preferences in choices involving two products that were means to conflicting goals. These preference patterns revealed that an initially active goal, which had been set aside to reconcile a goal conflict, exerted greater than expected influence on the remainder of the choice process. This influence was manifest in a tendency for consumers to revert to the product aligned with the initially active goal upon seeing information that objectively favored neither product. The prevalence of the reversion (i.e., flip-flop) preference pattern suggests that activation of a set-aside goal escalates when it is set aside, much as if its pursuit had been impeded by an external force. In addition to revealing goal reversion in a variety of choice contexts, the studies in this article also find that goal reversion is moderated by goal conflict.

Biased Predecisional Processing of Leading and Nonleading Alternatives

When people obtain information about choice alternatives in a set one attribute at a time, they rapidly identify a leading alternative. Although previous research has established that people then distort incoming information, it is unclear whether distortion occurs through favoring of the leading alternative, disfavoring of the trailing alternative, or both. Prior examinations have not explored the predecisional treatment of the nonleading alternative (or alternatives) because they conceptualized distortion as a singular construct in binary choice and measured it using a relative item comparing the evaluation of both alternatives simultaneously. In this article, we introduce a measure of distortion at the level of the alternative, which allows for measuring whether predecisional distortion favors or disfavors every alternative being considered in choice sets of various sizes. We report that both proleader and antitrailer distortion occur and that the use of antitrailer processing differs between binary choices and multiple-options choices.

Benefits Leader Reversion: How a Once- Preferred Product Recaptures Its Standing

Consumers generally establish a preference for one product early in a decision process. When this preference does not include consideration of product prices, the currently preferred product is called the benefits leader. This article proposes that consumers who switch to a cheaper product after learning prices retain a trace of their benefits leader. Retention of the benefits leader is evidenced by the distortion of new information to favor the benefits leader, and by greater than normative reversion to it. We also find that reversion does not occur when the initially leading product (that consumers switch from) is based on a cost savings. This suggests that though consumers retain cognitive elements associated with benefits leaders, they do not retain similar elements associated with leaders based on cost savings.