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Choose as much as you wish: freedom cues in the marketplace help consumers feel more satisfied with what they choose and improve customer experience

Author

Listed:
  • Fasolo, Barbara
  • Misuraca, Raffaella
  • Reutskaja, Elena
Abstract
Consumer satisfaction and customer experience are key predictors of an organization's future market growth, long-term customer loyalty, and profitability but are hard to maintain in marketplaces with abundance of choice. Building on self-determination theory, we experimentally test a novel intervention that leverages consumer need for autonomy. The intervention is a message called a "freedom cue" (FC) which makes it salient that consumers can "choose as much as they wish." A 4-week field experiment in a sporting gear store establishes that FCs lead to greater consumer satisfaction compared to when the store displays no FC. A large (N = 669) preregistered process-tracing experiment run with a consumer panel and a global e-commerce company shows that FCs at point-of-sale improve consumer satisfaction and customer experience compared to an equivalent message that does not make freedom to choose any amount salient. Perceived freedom mediates the effect. FCs do not change the time spent or clicks on the website overall but do change the focus of the choice process. FCs lead to greater focus on what is chosen than on what is not chosen. We discuss practical implications for organizations and future research in consumer choice.

Suggested Citation

  • Fasolo, Barbara & Misuraca, Raffaella & Reutskaja, Elena, 2024. "Choose as much as you wish: freedom cues in the marketplace help consumers feel more satisfied with what they choose and improve customer experience," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118780, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:118780
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118780/
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elena Reutskaja & Rosemarie Nagel & Colin F. Camerer & Antonio Rangel, 2011. "Search Dynamics in Consumer Choice under Time Pressure: An Eye-Tracking Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 900-926, April.
    2. Larissa Becker & Elina Jaakkola, 2020. "Customer experience: fundamental premises and implications for research," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 630-648, July.
    3. Hazel Rose Markus & Barry Schwartz, 2010. "Does Choice Mean Freedom and Well-Being?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 344-355, August.
    4. Carmon, Ziv & Wertenbroch, Klaus & Zeelenberg, Marcel, 2003. "Option Attachment: When Deliberating Makes Choosing Feel Like Losing," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 30(1), pages 15-29, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    Cited by:

    1. Fasolo, Barbara & Heard, Claire & Scopelliti, Irene, 2024. "Mitigating cognitive bias to improve organizational decisions: an integrative review, framework, and research agenda," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 125404, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    freedom cue; customer experience; consumer satisfaction; field study; process tracing; IESE Business School;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General

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