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Role of Time Constraint

Aside from the microeconomic theories of utility maximisation and budget constraints, there are other elements that affect the nature of consumer choice in a real-life situation. A study was conducted to measure the computational processes of subjects when faced with a decision to choose a product from a bundle of slightly differentiated products, whilst faced with a time constraint. The study was conducted through an experiment in which participants were in a supermarket-like environment and were asked to pick a snack food item from a screenshot out of a set of either 4, 9 or 16 similar items.

Examples of Screen Shots for Set Sizes 4, 9 and 16.

This decision was to be completed within a 3 second time window. Both choices and reaction times of participants were recorded, but the actual search process was recorded using eye-tracking. The study then compares three different computational process models to find the one that best explains the decision process of the consumer.

The goal of the study is to understand the computational process used by the average consumer to make these quick and seemingly meaningless purchase decisions. All three models are slight variations of widely known search models in economics. The first model represents the “optimal” model, in which there are zero search costs. I.e., the consumer looks for the maximum number of items within the time frame and picks the “best-seen” item. “Best-seen” meaning the item in which the consumer spends the most time viewing. The second process is the “satisficing” model, wherein the consumer searches until they have found an objectively satisficing item, or they run out of time. The third and final search model is a hybrid of the optimal and satisficing models, in which they search for a random amount of time and pick the “best-seen” item. That amount of time is contingent on the value of the encountered items.

The results show that consumers are typically good at optimizing items that they have seen within the search process, i.e., they can easily make a choice from the “seen-set” of items. The results also show that consumers mostly use the hybrid model as a computational process for consumer choice. The data is most qualitatively consistent with the hybrid model rather than the optimal or satisficing models.

The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that time pressure and graphic design of consumer goods all play an important role in understanding the computational behavioural processes of consumer choice.