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Preference Reversals in Willingness to Pay and Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Michael O’Donnell
  • Ellen R K Evers
  • Vicki G Morwitz
  • Kristin Diehl

Abstract

A fundamental contribution of consumer behavior research is to help marketing scholars develop an understanding of how people think about and express their preferences. In this article we find that two commonly used preference elicitation procedures, willingness to pay (WTP) and choice, are consistently associated with different expressed preferences. Specifically, choices are associated with a relatively greater preference for hedonic goods, while WTP is associated with a relatively greater preference for utilitarian goods. We find that this is caused, in part, by the greater reliance on deliberation in determining WTP values, while preferences in choices are determined by an affect heuristic. Unlike other choice and WTP preference reversals, we find that this effect is not caused by mechanical determinants such as scale compatibility, as the effect persists with continuous scale measures that rely on affect and with choice-based scale measures that rely on determining valuation.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael O’Donnell & Ellen R K Evers & Vicki G Morwitz & Kristin Diehl, 2019. "Preference Reversals in Willingness to Pay and Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 45(6), pages 1315-1330.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:45:y:2019:i:6:p:1315-1330.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jcr/ucy052
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    Cited by:

    1. Alice Moon & Leif D. Nelson, 2020. "The Uncertain Value of Uncertainty: When Consumers Are Unwilling to Pay for What They Like," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4686-4702, October.
    2. Koşar, Gizem & Ransom, Tyler & van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2022. "Understanding migration aversion using elicited counterfactual choice probabilities," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(1), pages 123-147.

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