Research Note—Deliberation Without Attention: The Latent Benefits of Distracting Website Features for Online Purchase Decisions

Abstract

Early studies on Web design typically caution against the use of distracting website features in electronic commerce, such as animated banners, pop-ups, and floating advertisements, because they may cause annoyance for online consumers and disrupt information processing, leading to poorer purchase decisions. Yet, the recently uncovered deliberation-without-attention (D-W-A) effect suggests that distracting consumers from the decision-making process may improve their decision quality when there are a large number of decision parameters to consider. To ascertain whether the D-W-A effect can be triggered through the use of distracting website features in the context of online shopping, two experiments are conducted. The first experiment reveals that the presence of distracting website features, in the form of pop-ups, gives rise to annoyance in general, but also leads to better purchase decisions when the decision to be made is complex. The second experiment supports the findings of the first and sheds further light on the underlying mode of thought triggered by these features. In particular, by eliminating a number of potential alternative mechanisms, including online judgments, the mere disruption of decision-related thought, and cognitively constrained conscious deliberation, the second experiment demonstrates that unconscious deliberation is likely to be the underlying cause of superior decision making. With these findings, this research supports a more balanced view in the recent human–computer interaction literature, which suggests that the usual advice to minimize the use of distracting website features should be examined more carefully. The research also uncovers evidence that contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding the D-W-A effect and unconscious thought theory.