Guiding the consumer evaluation process and the probability of order-effects-in-choice

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated the robustness of order-effects-in-choice (i.e., disproportionate preference for the first and last item in a choice set). Even high product category knowledge (HCK) consumers are biased by serial position. Despite this, little work has examined how salespersons interactions can influence these effects. This current work focuses on the effect of two common salesperson interactions: being guided to evaluate a choice set following an isolation or a pairwise strategy. Results indicate that order-effects occur when HCK consumers are guided to follow a pairwise process, which is congruent with how they would naturally; however, these order-effects diminish when following an incongruent isolation process. Three experiments test this notion and demonstrate the role of attention in mediating the effect of process congruency on order-effects-in-choice. Contributing to our understanding of decision biases, this present research identifies salesperson interventions that can attenuate the likelihood of order-effects-in-choice.