Publications
Publications
- Forthcoming
- Journal of Marketing Research (JMR)
Save More Today or Tomorrow: The Role of Urgency in Pre-commitment Design
By: Joseph S. Reiff, Hengchen Dai, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi
Abstract
To encourage farsighted behaviors, past research suggests that marketers may be wise to invite consumers to pre-commit to adopt them “later.” However, the authors propose that people will draw different inferences from different types of pre-commitment offers, and that these inferences can help explain when pre-commitment is effective at increasing adoption of farsighted behaviors and when it is not. Specifically, the authors theorize that simultaneously offering consumers the opportunity to adopt a farsighted behavior now or later (i.e., offering “simultaneous pre-commitment”) may signal that the behavior is not urgently recommended; however, offering consumers the opportunity to adopt that behavior immediately and then, only if they decline, inviting them to adopt it later (i.e., offering “sequential pre-commitment”) may signal just the opposite. In a multi-site field experiment (N=5,196), the authors find that simultaneously giving consumers the chance to increase their savings now or later reduced retirement savings. Two pre-registered lab studies (N=5,080) show that simultaneous pre-commitment leads people to infer that taking action is not urgently recommended, and such inferences predict less adoption of recommended behaviors. Importantly, offering sequential pre-commitment increases inferred urgency, predicting greater adoption. Together, this research advances knowledge about the limits and potential of pre-commitment.
Keywords
Citation
Reiff, Joseph S., Hengchen Dai, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, and Shlomo Benartzi. "Save More Today or Tomorrow: The Role of Urgency in Pre-commitment Design." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) (forthcoming). (Pre-published online January 13, 2023.)