An Experimental Study of Intertemporal Choices: The Case of Customer Relationship Management

An in‐basket task scenario was arranged where 10 participants were required to prioritize between a short‐term task and a task that was related to a long term‐project. The participants were given an in‐basket task that should be solved within 40 min. They were interrupted by an incoming telephone call five times during the task period (after 7, 14, 21, 28, and 35 min). The interruption was related to a long‐term project linked to a bonus payment at the end of the year. Results indicate that 6 out of 10 participants spent less time on an interruption if it occurred late in the 40 min in‐basket task session. This supports the assumptions that, in customer relationship management activities, individuals work on smaller tasks whose outcomes occur sooner rather than on tasks with larger but later outcomes. Hence, the results support the idea that discounted utility of outcomes plays an important role in understanding choices in an organizational setting. Results from the present study indicate that technological drift can be understood within the hyperbolic discounting framework. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.