Abstract
Waiting is a mundane yet inevitable customer experience. Surprisingly, little research has analyzed the effects of waiting on subsequent customer behavior. The current research explores a counterintuitive effect of waiting times on behavior during a shopping trip: Longer waits, compared with shorter waits, can lead to a larger number of purchases despite generating more negative emotional reactions. Results of a field study and three lab experiments demonstrate this effect in the context of waiting for hedonic products. Consistent with a social-inference account, the experiments further show that the effect of waiting duration occurs when wait times are thought to depend on others’ preferences. This article explores the multifaceted effects of waiting duration on purchase behavior of hedonic products and sheds light on the social cognitions that underlie these effects.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 990671 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Volume | 13 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 18 Oct 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:Copyright © 2022 Munichor and Cooke.
Funding
The authors wish to thank Inbal Chameides, Yana Mazurovsky, and Barak Goldkorn for their assistance in collecting the field study’s data.
Keywords
- consumer behavior
- purchases
- queues
- social inferences
- waiting time
