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American Economic Review Vol. 101 No. 2 2011

Search Dynamics in Consumer Choice under Time Pressure: An Eye-Tracking Study

Elena Reutskaja1; Rosemarie Nagel2; Colin F. Camerer3; Antonio Rangel3

1 Marketing Department, IESE Business School, Barcelona Campus, Avenida Pearson, 21, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. · 2 Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and ICREA, Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, Barcelona 08005, Spain. · 3 Computational and Neural Systems and Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 1200 East California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125.

Abstract

We study decisions that involve choosing between different numbers of options under time pressure using eye-tracking to monitor the search process of the subjects. We find that subjects are quite adept at optimizing within the set of items that they see, that the initial search process is random in value, that subjects use a stopping rule to terminate the search process that combines features of optimal search and satisficing, and that subjects search more often in certain focal regions of the display, which leads to choice biases.

DOI
10.1257/aer.101.2.900
Volume
101
Issue
2
Pages
900-926
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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