Abstract
When faced with two similar alternatives, customers struggle to choose one. The concept of a phantom decoy, an attractive but unavailable alternative in the list of choices at the final purchasing stage, may help customers make the choice that best serves the customer and the hotel. Hotel rooms are not always available due to popularity or renovation. In this study, a 2 × 2 experiments was designed to investigate whether a phantom decoy would influence the decision-making behavior of people when they choose hotels, and to test the satisfaction between booking a hotel room using an online travel agent (OTA) and the hotel brand website. Reactance theory and attribution theory were confirmed when a phantom decoy was added to customers’ choice sets.
Highlights
Most decision-making research focuses on the inclusion of specific alternatives in a choice set that are used to alter a customer’s purchase intentions among all the alternatives in the choice set
Participants exposed to online travel agent (OTA) conditions gave a higher score in the manipulation check item that you were booking a hotel on OTA (M =5.84) than participants exposed to hotel website conditions (M = 4.31) (F (76,212) = 45.25, P < .001)
Participants exposed to hotel website conditions gave a higher score in the manipulation check item that you were booking a hotel on the hotel website (M = 4.60) than participants exposed to OTA conditions (M = 3.67) (F (27,428) = 8.15, P < .05)
Summary
Most decision-making research focuses on the inclusion of specific alternatives in a choice set that are used to alter a customer’s purchase intentions among all the alternatives in the choice set. Those specific alternatives are typically called decoys. A consumer might struggle to make a choice when faced with two undistinguishable alternatives. They are more likely to choose the alternative that includes a decoy instead of the one without a decoy. A better product is out-of-stock or sold out
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