Consumers are faced with a bewildering array of options in a supermarket. Sellers, meanwhile, spend billions of dollars trying to influence in-store choice. Knowledge of the algorithm that consumers use to make their fast choices is essential to being able to predict the qualitative and quantitative effects of such practices. A new study uses eye-tracking techniques to model consumer behavior when confronted with a range of choices.
What computational processes people use, how the processes and performance change with the number of options, and how this process can be exploited by sellers are the questions addressed in the paper, “Search Dynamics in Consumer Choice Under Time Pressure: An Eye-Tracking Study.”
The authors, Elena Reutskaja, Rosemarie Nagel, Colin F. Camerer and Antonio Rangel studied these questions by setting up an experimental version of the consumer’s supermarket problem.
More information at IESE Insight
