Influence of Information Unpacking on Preference For Future Events

This article examines the interplay between the temporal distance of future events and the degree of specificity (“packed” vs. “unpacked”) of information indicating their attractiveness in terms of particular feature dimensions on people’s evaluations of these events. We introduce the hypothesis that unpacking a particular feature of an event – i.e., characterizing it in more fine-grained terms – increases the importance of that feature in determining preference for the event when the latter is to occur in the near future, but that the same unpacking reduces feature importance in preference for an event in the more distant future. The experimental evidence reported in this article provides clear support for this prediction. While more fine-grained (unpacked) information has greater weight than more aggregate (packed) information in preference for near future events, the opposite tends to be true for distant future events.

Citation:

Xin Ge and Gerald Haubl (2011) ,"Influence of Information Unpacking on Preference For Future Events", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Zhihong Yi, Jing Jian Xiao, and June Cotte and Linda Price, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 49-50.