Leveraging Behavioral Interventions to Change Consumers' Preferences to Wait
Final Report Abstract
“Waiting is frustrating, demoralizing, agonizing, aggravating, annoying, time consuming and incredibly expensive,” stated a famous Federal Express advertisement, capturing an experience familiar to most people. The experience of waiting becomes particularly dreadful when consumers perceive time to be moving extremely slowly. The present research examines an overlooked aspect of time perception: the nature of the outcome at the end of a waiting experience. The authors demonstrate that waiting for the presence of an event, such as a light turning on, feels longer than waiting the same duration for the absence of an event, such as a light staying off. The authors suggest that this effect emerges because waiting for an event requires more active anticipation and uncertainty of when the event might occur may increase cognitive load. As a result, consumers may be more likely to focus intently detecting the change, making time feel slower. The research also reveals that outcome signaling affects how consumers interpret causality. When success is signaled by a null event (i.e., absence of change), consumers are less likely to perceive a causal relationship between the potential causal factor and the observed outcome. This pattern emerged consistently across various contexts, from evaluating therapy effectiveness to assessing cleaning products. Preliminary evidence suggests that consumers view null event signals as less time-bounded, making it harder to link signals to specific moments, thereby weakening causal judgments. These findings have important implications for how information should be communicated to ensure accurate and fair interpretation of outcomes by consumers. The research emphasizes that both the outcomes themselves and their presentation method significantly influence perception of time and causality. In a separate study, the authors investigate consumer responses to ideology-based denial, where businesses refuse service based on political or social beliefs. Their findings indicate that the perceived identity-expressiveness of denied products or services—the extent to which the denied good is perceived to represent a firm’s cultural, religious, or ethical beliefs—influences how consumers judge the acceptability of such denials. Specifically, consumers find ideology-based denial more acceptable for identity-expressive goods because they attribute these denials to businesses upholding moral values rather than discriminatory intent. This research provides valuable insights into how consumers evaluate ideology-based denial, highlighting the crucial role of perceived product identity-expressiveness. These findings have particular relevance to ongoing legal debates, including those before the U.S. Supreme Court, and offer practical guidance for businesses balancing their values with customer expectations.
Publications
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“The Null-Event Signal Bias in Perceptions of Causality,” Association for Consumer Research (ACR) Annual Conference, Seattle, 2023.
Gärth, Maximilian
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“No Cake For You: Consumer Responses to Ideology-Based Customer Denial,” American Marketing Association (AMA) Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group (CBSIG) Conference, Vienna, 2024.
Gärth, Maximilian
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“No Cake For You: Consumer Responses to Ideology-Based Customer Denial,” Association for Consumer Research (ACR) Annual Conference, Paris, 2024.
Gärth, Maximilian
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“No Cake For You: Consumer Responses to Ideology-Based Customer Denial,” Winter American Marketing Association (AMA) Conference, St. Pete Beach, 2024.
Gärth, Maximilian
