IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v38y2013icp104-110.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How consumers deal with missed discounts: Transaction decoupling, action orientation and inaction inertia

Author

Listed:
  • van Putten, Marijke
  • Zeelenberg, Marcel
  • van Dijk, Eric

Abstract

Attractive bonuses and large discounts are often successfully used to attract new customers and increase sales. However, from a marketing perspective these attractive opportunities might have a negative side effect, as they decrease subsequent sales to the consumers who missed them. In this review article we discuss how the inability to regulate the pain of missed opportunities might lead to this so-called inaction inertia effect. We argue that deficiencies in self-regulation may be explained on the basis of a combination of contextual and personality factors. We present literature on contextual factors that facilitate regulation (decoupling factors), and action orientation, an individual characteristic that enhances regulation. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of these results for the marketing and consumer behavior literature.

Suggested Citation

  • van Putten, Marijke & Zeelenberg, Marcel & van Dijk, Eric, 2013. "How consumers deal with missed discounts: Transaction decoupling, action orientation and inaction inertia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 104-110.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:38:y:2013:i:c:p:104-110
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.09.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487012001080
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2012.09.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard H. Thaler, 2008. "Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 15-25, 01-02.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:5:y:2010:i:1:p:33-36 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Drazen Prelec & George Loewenstein, 1998. "The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(1), pages 4-28.
    4. Gourville, John T & Soman, Dilip, 1998. "Payment Depreciation: The Behavioral Effects of Temporally Separating Payments from Consumption," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 25(2), pages 160-174, September.
    5. Michael Tsiros, 2009. "Releasing the Regret Lock: Consumer Response to New Alternatives after a Sale," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(6), pages 1039-1059, April.
    6. Arkes, Hal R. & Kung, Yi-Han & Hutzel, Laura, 2002. "Regret, Valuation, and Inaction Inertia," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 371-385, March.
    7. repec:cup:judgdm:v:2:y:2007:i::p:333-341 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Zeelenberg, Marcel & Nijstad, Bernard A. & van Putten, Marijke & van Dijk, Eric, 2006. "Inaction inertia, regret, and valuation: A closer look," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 89-104, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hagen, Johannes & Malisa, Amedeus, 2022. "Financial fraud and individual investment behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 593-626.
    2. Lu, Jingyi & Jia, Huiyuan & Xie, Xiaofei & Wang, Qiuhong, 2016. "Missing the best opportunity; who can seize the next one? Agents show less inaction inertia than personal decision makers," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 100-112.
    3. Liu, Hsin-Hsien & Chou, Hsuan-Yi, 2018. "Promotional formats and inaction inertia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 22-32.
    4. Jung, Dominik & Erdfelder, Edgar & Bröder, Arndt & Dorner, Verena, 2019. "Differentiating motivational and cognitive explanations for decision inertia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 30-44.
    5. Wood, Matthew S. & Williams, David W. & Drover, Will, 2017. "Past as prologue: Entrepreneurial inaction decisions and subsequent action judgments," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 107-127.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Hsin-Hsien & Chou, Hsuan-Yi, 2018. "Promotional formats and inaction inertia," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 22-32.
    2. White, Tiffany Barnett & Novak, Thomas P. & Hoffman, Donna L., 2014. "No Strings Attached: When Giving It Away Versus Making Them Pay Reduces Consumer Information Disclosure," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 184-195.
    3. Priya Jha-Dang, 2006. "A Review of Psychological Research on Consumer Promotions and a New Perspective Based on Mental Accounting," Vision, , vol. 10(3), pages 35-43, July.
    4. Haipeng (Allan) Chen & Akshay R. Rao, 2002. "Close Encounters of Two Kinds: False Alarms and Dashed Hopes," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(2), pages 178-196, August.
    5. Scott B. Jackson & Paul A. Shoemaker & John A. Barrick & F. Greg Burton, 2005. "Taxpayers' Prepayment Positions and Tax Return Preparation Fees," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(2), pages 409-447, June.
    6. Kirchler, Erich & Hoelzl, Erik & Kamleitner, Bernadette, 2008. "Spending and credit use in the private household," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 519-532, April.
    7. Cheng, Andong & Baskin, Ernest, 2021. "Disproportionate redemption discounting: Mental accounting of discounted credit," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 156-163.
    8. Ina Garnefeld & Andreas Eggert & Markus Husemann-Kopetzky & Eva Böhm, 2019. "Exploring the link between payment schemes and customer fraud: a mental accounting perspective," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 595-616, July.
    9. Qiu, Shangzhi & Wu, Laurie & Yang, Yanjia & Zeng, Guojun, 2022. "Offering the right incentive at the right time: Leveraging customer mental accounting to promote prepaid service," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    10. Shi, Haijiao & Chen, Rong & Xu, Xiaobing, 2021. "How reward uncertainty influences subsequent donations: The role of mental accounting," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 383-391.
    11. Khan, Jashim & Belk, Russell W. & Craig-Lees, Margaret, 2015. "Measuring consumer perceptions of payment mode," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 34-49.
    12. Chu, Hsunchi & Liao, Shuling, 2010. "Buying while expecting to sell: The economic psychology of online resale," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(9-10), pages 1073-1078, September.
    13. Sheng-Hsun Hsu & Cheng-Fu Hsiao & Sang-Bing Tsai, 2018. "Constructing a consumption model of fine dining from the perspective of behavioral economics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-21, April.
    14. Sanjiv Erat & Sreekumar R. Bhaskaran, 2012. "Consumer Mental Accounts and Implications to Selling Base Products and Add-ons," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(5), pages 801-818, September.
    15. Dalla Costa, Aldo Fortunato & Mollica, Vito & Singh, Abhay, 2021. "Payment methods and the disposition effect: Evidence from Indonesian mutual fund trading," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    16. Peter Cappelli & Shinjae Won, 2016. "How You Pay Affects How You Do: Financial Aid Type and Student Performance in College," NBER Working Papers 22604, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Shafir, Eldar & Thaler, Richard H., 2006. "Invest now, drink later, spend never: On the mental accounting of delayed consumption," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 694-712, October.
    18. Manel Baucells & Woonam Hwang, 2017. "A Model of Mental Accounting and Reference Price Adaptation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(12), pages 4201-4218, December.
    19. Li Chen & A. Gürhan Kök & Jordan D. Tong, 2013. "The Effect of Payment Schemes on Inventory Decisions: The Role of Mental Accounting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(2), pages 436-451, September.
    20. Bernadette Kamleitner, 2008. "Coupling: the implicit assumption behind sunk cost effect and related phenomena," Working Papers 22, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inaction inertia; Transaction decoupling; Action orientation; Sunk cost fallacy; Self-regulation; Consumer psychology;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:38:y:2013:i:c:p:104-110. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.