Making the Wait Worthwhile: Mental Accounting and the Effect of Waiting in Line on Consumption
We find that long lines increase consumption and identify mental accounting of sunk costs as the underlying mechanism, while simultaneously dismissing alternative explanations. This mechanism leads to an unexpected implication, improving consumers’ waiting experience increases satisfaction, but decreases consumption, because the wait is perceived as less of a temporal investment.
Citation:
Chris Hydock, Sezer Ulku, and Shiliang Cui (2018) ,"Making the Wait Worthwhile: Mental Accounting and the Effect of Waiting in Line on Consumption", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 46, eds. Andrew Gershoff, Robert Kozinets, and Tiffany White, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 604-605.
Authors
Chris Hydock, Georgetown University, USA
Sezer Ulku, Georgetown University, USA
Shiliang Cui, Georgetown University, USA
Volume
NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 46 | 2018
Share Proceeding
Featured papers
See MoreFeatured
N4. Induction of Construal-Level Mindset via Surprise and the Follow-up Effect on Consumer Evaluations and Judgments
Atul A Kulkarni, University of Missouri, USA
Joëlle Vanhamme, EDHEC Business School, France
Featured
Guilt Undermines Consumer Willingness to Buy More Meaningful Time
Ashley V. Whillans, Harvard Business School, USA
Elizabeth W. Dunn, University of British Columbia, Canada
Featured
Individual-level Carryover-Parameters in Reference-Price Models
Ossama Elshiewy, University of Goettingen, Germany
Daniel Guhl, Humboldt-University Berlin