Publications
Publications
- March 2018
- Customer Needs and Solutions
How Context Affects Choice
By: Raphael Thomadsen, Robert P. Rooderkerk, On Amir, Neeraj Arora, Bryan Bollinger, Karsten Hansen, Leslie John, Wendy Liu, Aner Sela, Vishal Singh, K. Sudhir and Wendy Wood
Abstract
Due to its origins in the literature on judgment and decision-making, context effects in marketing are construed exclusively in terms of how choices deviate from utility maximization principles as a function of how choices are presented (e.g., framing, sequence, composition). This limits our understanding of a range of other relevant context effects on choice. This paper broadens the scope of context effects to include social (e.g., with friends or family) and situational factors (e.g., location, such as home or store; time; weather). We define contexts as any factor that has the potential to shift the choice outcomes by altering the process by which the decision is made. We use this lens to integrate the psychology literature on habitual choice, System I and II decision-making, and a recent stream of empirical work that involves social and situational effects into the scope of context effects. We distinguish between exogenous and endogenous context effects, based on whether the decision-maker chooses the context. We then discuss issues of empirically identifying context effects when using either experimentally generated data or naturally occurring secondary data. We conclude with a discussion of trends and opportunities for new research on context effects.
Keywords
Citation
Thomadsen, Raphael, Robert P. Rooderkerk, On Amir, Neeraj Arora, Bryan Bollinger, Karsten Hansen, Leslie John, Wendy Liu, Aner Sela, Vishal Singh, K. Sudhir, and Wendy Wood. "How Context Affects Choice." Special Issue on 2016 Choice Symposium. Customer Needs and Solutions 5, nos. 1-2 (March 2018): 3–14.
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