Keeping Options Open: How Decision Reversibility Dampens Evaluations of Choices based on Quality
Event Date: 24 October 2024
Speaker: Dr Dion Ang, Associate Professor in Marketing, University of Leeds
Time: 15:00-16:00pm,
Location: Strathclyde Business School, CW404b
Open to all Faculty and PGR candidates.
Abstract:
Attending to consumers’ preference for reversible decisions, firms offer increasingly lenient yet costly return and cancellation policies. Despite preferring reversible decisions, consumers evaluate choices they can reverse less favourably. Thus, retailers are in a catch-22 – reversible decisions attract customers yet diminish their post-choice evaluations. Addressing this impasse, we propose that how reversibility affects post-choice evaluations depends on whether decisions are a matter of taste or quality. An analysis of thousands of Airbnb listings and four experiments reveal that (1) although consumers prefer reversible decisions, they evaluate their reversible choice less favourably when it is based on quality (but not taste), (2) basing decisions on taste attenuates the negative effect of reversibility on evaluations, and (3) the effect is driven by choice criticism. Thus, making decisions more irreversible boosts post-choice evaluations. An analysis of over 40,000 Airbnb listings externally validates our predictions. Increasing a listing’s cancellation policy strictness increases occupancy rates more for listings promoted in terms of quality rather than taste. The findings reveal boundary conditions of decision reversibility’s detrimental effects on post-choice evaluations and facilitate optimal return and cancellation policy design and message framing.
Biography:
Dionysius Ang is an Associate Professor in Marketing at Leeds University Business School. Prior to joining Leeds University Business School, Dr Ang was a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher at KU Leuven and INSEAD where received her PhD in Business Economics (Marketing) and MSc in Management respectively. In addition to a Research Masters in Social Psychology from Tilburg University, she was also a visiting scholar at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Ang’s research focuses on consumer behaviour, with a focus on affect and decision-making. It revolves around three broad themes (1) payment methods (e.g. buy-now-pay-later), (2) returns and cancellations and (3) choice architecture. Her research has appeared in top-tiered journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, as well as numerous conferences such as Association of Consumer Research, Society for Judgement and Decision-Making.
Published: 22 October 2024
