Events

Dr. Eddie Ning
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Behavioural Science Division
University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT

When gathering information to make decisions, individuals often have to delay making a decision because the process of gathering information is interrupted, and the individual is not yet ready to make a decision. The paper considers a model of choice deferral based on time-varying search costs, potentially based on search fatigue, in which individuals have to strategically decide whether to defer choice when information gathering is interrupted, taking into account the current available information, and when they will be able to resume gathering information. We find that individuals are more likely to defer choice when information gathering is interrupted less frequently, when individuals can resume gathering information sooner, and when they discount less the future. We also consider the case in which individuals incur costs of re-starting a process of information gathering, and cases in which the individual has greater or less information about the extent of search fatigue. The paper also considers optimal pricing and shows how pricing should respond to the length of consumer browsing sessions, and gaps between browsing sessions