The grass really isnt greener on the other side for consumers

Consumers who repeatedly change their shopping-related decisions to improve their future choices often fail to appreciate the value of their current choices, according to a collaborative study.

Washington, Aug. 8 : Consumers who repeatedly change their shopping-related decisions to improve their future choices often fail to appreciate the value of their current choices, according to a collaborative study.

Tom Meyvis of New York University and Alan Cooke of the University of Florida conducted a series of eight experiments, and found that while making similar choices in the future, consumers selectively paid attention to information that suggested that an alternative would be better.

It was also observed that consumers tended to disregard information that indicated that their current choices were the best possible ones.

"Our findings suggest that consumers who are focused on the future are so preoccupied with finding ways to improve their situation that they become overly sensitive to information that points to such opportunities - and lose sight of the relative advantages of their current choice," explain the authors of the study reported in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Meyvis and Cooke asked study participants to choose among three stores on a series of simulated shopping trips. After each trip, the consumers were shown the price charged for a product at their chosen store and the prices charged at each of the other two stores.

At the end of a series of shopping trips, participants were asked to indicate which store was the cheapest, and whether they would want to switch to another store for a second set of shopping trips.

The researchers found that the participants were less likely to prefer the store they initially chose and more likely to switch to another store after the first set of trips, when they were told in advance that they would make a second set of shopping trips. The participants also thought that the store they chose was the most expensive.

The phenomenon was replicated in later studies even when the chosen store was less expensive than the other two stores.

It was found that participants who did not expect to have to make a second choice accurately recalled an equal number of trips on which the chosen store was cheaper or more expensive.

"Ironically, participants who were preparing for future decisions, and should therefore be more motivated to learn from their past choices, were less likely to realize that they had selected the cheapest store and were more likely to switch to other, more expensive stores," the authors write.

The additional evidence suggests that consumers who anticipate future choices selectively search for ways to improve their current situation and disproportionately pay attention to better prices at other stores.

"As a result, forward looking consumers overestimate how green the grass is on the other side of the fence, leading them to abandon their chosen store for an often objectively inferior alternative," say the authors.

ANI