VARSITY CONTRIBUTOR
A new study by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management breaks down consumers’ thought processes when estimating a good time for events or products.
Professor Claire Tsai believes “consumption time plays a central role in consumer decisions, and it is understudied by consumer researchers. Most people think disecting an event will always increase time estimates. We show this is not true for negative events and this finding has important policy implications.”
The authors conducted three experiments with 500 participants to show that consumers’ predicted consumption time is systematically influenced by whether they predict the consumption experience to be positive or negative. If the consumer sees the event as positive, then the estimation of time spent will be greater than if the consumer views the event as negative. This is so because “people hold a lay belief that they spend more time on more pleasurable events and less time on less pleasurable events.”
Therefore, if a consumer foresees spending more time on an event or product, such as online social networking, workout equipment, unlimited parking passes, then the consumer is more likely to purchase the product. The consumer is interested in getting the best value for their money.
In one experiment, participants were asked to predict how much time they would spend on weekend social activities. This overarching category consisted of sub-activities such as blind dates, birthday parties, and phone conversations. Once the event was described as either pleasant or unpleasant, half of the participants made a time estimate for the overarching event, and the other half made time estimates for the individual components. The findings were that when the event was described as pleasant, unpacking increased enjoyment. When the opposite was true, unpacking increased displeasure and reduced time estimates of the event.
