Marketing Seminar（2018-22）

Topic: When Does Choice Architecture Fail? How User Models in Choice Architecture Impact Consumer Decision-Making

Speaker: Benedict G.C. Dellaert, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Time: Monday, 19 November, 13:30-15:00

Location: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

To enable consumers to make better decisions, choice architects must have a representation of consumers’ preferences, what we term user models. These models guide the decisions that choice architects make in designing choice environments. However, user models differ in accuracy. Depending on the quality of a user model, we argue that different choice architecture tools can be either helpful or harmful to consumers. We investigate an ensemble of choice architecture interventions we label Sorted Partitioned Sets (SPSs) designed to improve consumer choices in large product sets. The sorting in SPSs presents alternatives in order of attractiveness based on a user model. The partitioning first presents a small initial set of alternatives with the option to click through to see all alternatives. Results from two controlled experiments and a field study on health insurance choice demonstrate that, as hypothesized, when user model quality is high, SPSs improve consumer choice outcomes by a process of both increasing consumers’ focus on the most attractive alternatives and encouraging the use of more compensatory decision strategies. In contrast, if user model quality is low, combining partitioning with sorting is harmful to consumer choices. Thus, different choice architecture tools work well depending on user model quality.

Introduction:

Benedict G.C. Dellaert is director of the department of Business Economics and professor of marketing at the Erasmus School of Economics. Professor Dellaert’ s focus in research and education is on consumer decision-making and consumer- firm interaction. His papers have appeared in journals such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), and Information Systems Research. His research findings have important implications in digital marketing, financial services, healthcare, and travel. He regularly works with financial services firms on projects to support consumer decision making with online (risk) communication and personalized recommendations. Recent projects involve partners such as Achmea, APG and Robeco. He is also a member of the board of supervisors (Raad van Toezicht) of Independer.nl. Professor Dellaert is currently a research theme coordinator at the Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement (Netspar), a fellow of the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), and a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute. He is also a fractional professor of marketing at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and a visiting professor at UCL School of Management, London, UK. His former research and teaching positions include posts at the University of Sydney in Australia, Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Your participation is warmly welcomed!