Do Consumers Overlook Usage Frequency?
(A2019-8873)

AUTHORS

Mauricio Mittelman, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez; Dilney Gonçalves, IE Business School – IE University; Eduardo B. Andrade, Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration at FGV

KEYWORDS

consumer psychology; usage frequency; consumer choices

ABSTRACT

People consider aspects that are salient in the environment to a much larger extent than aspects that are not. This explains why consumers often fail to consider factors that are important for their purchase decisions, such as opportunity costs (Frederick et al., 2009) and hedonic adaptation (Wang, Novemsky, & Dhar, 2009). In two studies, we show that usage frequency is another important example of this class of phenomena. Our participants overlooked how frequently they expected to use the product they were contemplating buying, unless we prompted them to do so. Suggestions for future research aimed at increasing our understanding of the phenomenon are discussed.