Choice overload, satisficing behavior, and price distribution in a time allocation model
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Choice overload, satisficing behavior, and price distribution in a time allocation model
zbMATH Open document ID: 1406.91235
DOI: 10.1155/2014/569054
author: José-Manuel Rey
author: Raúl G. Sanchis
author: Francisco Alvarez
published in: Abstract and Applied Analysis
publication date: 2019-02-14T00:00:00Z
review text: Summary: Recent psychological research indicates that consumers that search exhaustively for the best option of a market product -- known as maximizers -- eventually feel worse than consumers who just look for something good enough -- called satisficers. We formulate a time allocation model to explore the relationship between different distributions of prices of the product and the satisficing behavior and the related welfare of the consumer. We show numerically that, as the number of options becomes large, the maximizing behavior produces less and less welfare and eventually leads to choice paralysis -- these are effects of choice overload -- whereas satisficing conducts entail higher levels of satisfaction and do not end up in paralysis. For different price distributions, we provide consistent evidence that maximizers are better off for a low number of options, whereas satisficers are better off for a sufficiently large number of options. We also show how the optimal satisficing behavior is affected when the underlying price distribution varies. We provide evidence that the mean and the dispersion of a symmetric distribution of prices -- but not the shape of the distribution -- condition the satisficing behavior of consumers. We also show that this need not be the case for asymmetric distributions.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 91B42
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 91B24
zbMATH DE Number: 7022628
zbMATH Keywords: time allocation
zbMATH Keywords: price distribution
zbMATH Keywords: consumer's choice overload
zbMATH Keywords: satisficing behavior of consumers
Wikidata QID: Q59039524
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/569054
OpenAlex ID: W1992486167
cites work: Numerical analysis of a time allocation model accounting for choice overload
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7022628