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Eyes on the account size: Interactions between attention and budget in consumer choice*

Amasino,Dianna R.
; 
Dolgin,Jack
; 
Huettel,Scott A.
Abstract
The context surrounding a consumer decision, such as one's overall budget available for pur-chases, can exert a strong effect on the subjective value of a product. Across three eye-tracking studies, we explore the attentional processes through which budget size influences consumers' purchasing behavior. Higher budgets increased and sped up purchasing even when items were affordable at all budget sizes. Moreover, attention interacted with budget size to promote pur-chasing at higher budgets. Finally, individual differences in the magnitude of the budget effect related to attentional patterns: those whose decisions depended more on budget exhibited more budget-price transitions and less variability in search patterns compared to those whose decisions were less dependent on budget. These findings indicate that attention moderates the effect of budgets on purchasing decisions, allowing low budgets to serve as self-control devices and large budgets to generate impulse purchases.
Description
Funding Information: A grant from the National Endowment for Financial Education supported this research. D.R.A. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1644868. S.A.H. was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under grant MH R01-108627. Support for computation comes from resources provided by NIH S10-OD-021480. Funding sources had no involvement in the research.
Date
2023
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Tilburg University Research Output Collection
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Keywords
Attention, Budget, Consumer choice, Eye tracking
Citation
Amasino, D R, Dolgin, J & Huettel, S A 2023, 'Eyes on the account size : Interactions between attention and budget in consumer choice*', Journal of Economic Psychology, vol. 97, 102632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2023.102632
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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14602/79652
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info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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