Department of Accounting

A short report from Li Yan on her research findings presented in the conference.

Outside view Gaylord Hotel at Dallas, Texas

Past research has shown consumers focus on one option more than the other when they compare two options by attributes. They attune to focal option’s attributes and map them back to referent option. They prefer focal option more (less) to referent option when its attributes are attractive (unattractive). This is called “direction- of-comparison” effect. Such effect has not been examined in a more realistic, multiple-option context. When the number of option increases, consumers cannot remember all information and recall them for attribute comparison, so the effect should disappear. We, however, show that the effect is not only sustainable but more prominent in multiple-option situation. We conducted three studies to show that the DOC effect increased in multiple-option settings. Furthermore, we showed that the DOC effect can be extended to the beneficiary effect and the disadvantage effect depending on whether consumers compared attractive attributes or unattractive attributes.

Readers commented that the contribution was clear, but the magnitude of the contribution would leave to the reviewers to decide. They suggested that we should give a bigger picture to convey why it is important to investigate the DOC effect upfront so that we can raise people’s attention to the theory we investigated. Besides, they also commented that we should look for interesting moderators that have not been looked at in previous studies. The potential breakthrough would add further interest to the theory