Eventi del

20 2014 12:45 - 14:00
Via Roentgen, 1  4th floor room E4.SR01

Construction of Preferences: Two Marketing Implications

Joachim Vosgerau, Tilburg School of Economics and Management

The tenet that preferences are constructed underlies much of consumer behavior research and marketing practice. Consumer preferences for goods and services can be influenced through advertising, the choice context, the way preferences are elicited, through irrelevant product attributes, etc. In this talk, I will present two marketing implications of constructed preferences. The first concerns substitution of products. When a desired target product is unavailable, consumers often switch to substitutes. Although consumers prefer within-category substitutes, cross-category substitutes are shown to be more effective in reducing craving for the target product, because cross-category substitutes are less likely than within-category substitutes to be compared to the target product.

The second implication concerns risk preferences. People are shown to be risk averse and risk seeking for the same risky prospect; participants asked to be paid (WTA) and were willing to pay (WTP) to play the same gamble. The extreme malleability of risk preferences documented in these studies may contribute to designing new interventions in marketing and public policy aimed at influencing how consumers evaluate health, environmental, and financial risks.