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Working Paper

Choosing What I Want versus Rejecting What I Don't Want: An Application of Decision Framing to Product Option Choice Decisions

C. Whan Park, Sung Youl Jun, and Deborah J. MacInnis, 1999 [99-124]

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Today consumers are frequently asked to choose options for the products they purchase, and a growing number of manufacturing systems allow buyers to select product option combinations tailored to their specific needs. Yet to date, research in marketing has offered little managerial insight into this important aspect of consumer decision making.

In this study, authors Park, Jun, and MacInnis investigate what happens in choice decisions when consumers are asked to add product options to a base model (additive framing) versus delete options from a fully loaded model (subtractive framing). In three experiments, the researchers examined how, when, and why option framing affects choice outcomes. Among their findings:

• Consumers chose more options with a higher total option price in the subtractive framing task than in the additive framing task. This effect held true for two price levels for the options and for product categories of varying prices (cars, computers, treadmills). Further, when asked to anticipate regret (i.e., told that a dealer policy would prohibit option changes after purchase), consumers chose more options in the subtractive framing than in the additive framing task.

• Because consumers in the subtractive framing condition used the price of the full model as their anchor, they were more likely than those in the additive framing condition to view the product as being in a premium versus an economy price category. Similarly, because the final paid price was lower than the full-model anchor price, these consumers were also more likely to view the product as delivering more value. Finally, consumers found the task of deleting options from a full model more enjoyable, although more difficult, than adding options to a base model.

• These effects held true only when the consumer had a high interest in buying a product. When the consumer had low interest in buying a product, the higher price anchor in the subtractive framing condition seemed to further lower their purchase motivation.

Taken together, these findings suggest that when consumers are committed to buying within a product category, subtractive framing of the product option selection task may be optimal from a managerial point of view. However, some practices could also raise public policy issues—if, for example, a marketer intentionally loaded a brand with options to realize a higher purchase price, irrespective of the actual value delivered by such options.

C. Whan Park is the Joseph A. DeBell Distinguished Professor, Marketing, University of Southern California, Sung Youl Jun is Assistant Professor, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea, and Deborah J. MacInnis is Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Southern California.

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