Eye tracking and decision making Flashcards
Mere exposure effect - Zajonc (1968)
Used Turkish nonsense words, Chinese-like characters, photos.
- stimuli shown for 2 secs - 0-6 rating.
- found familiarity and repeated exposure increased “goodness” - breeds appeal.
Does the halo effect always apply?
Fang, Sing and Aluwahlia (2007): 232 students, Kansas.
- showed banner ads on web pages.
- ppts saw target ads - 0/5/10 times.
- rated ads after reading web pages.
Findings:
- build of halo effect dependant on initial liking.
- only occurs if initial evaluation is positive.
Norman (2004): argues you can use visceral beauty responses to build this ‘halo effect’ - more familiar the more it builds.
Mere exposure & halo effect
Zajonc (1968): automatic increase of appeal via stimuli exposure.
Lingaard (2006): decisions made reliably in 50ms.
Boundary limitations: can create halo effects - but to build upon, need initial liking.
- if they don’t like it, repeating won’t be beneficial.
Eye tracking and attention
Fixations and saccades.
Unconscious process - what is processed longest and most.
- short, easy words most likely processed quicker.
Eye mind hypothesis (Just & Carpenter, 1980)
“No appreciable lag between what is fixated and what is process.”
Eye tracking in action
If there is a face, we are automatically inclined to attend to the face for longest period of time.
Also big headlines/large written text and other pictures.
Smaller info received less.
Eye movements (Pieters, Wedel & Rosenberg, 1997/2004)
Top left corner often attended to first - commonly where key info/title is.
1.73secs = average time examining ads.
Eye tracking (Cowen, Ball & Delin, 2002)
Measures typically used for eye movement measurement:
- number of fixations.
- total fixation duration.
- average fixation duration.
- fixation spatial density - provides “global measure of the total amount of processing performed on each page”. - metric equivalent of heatmaps.
- scanpaths.
What eye tracking does not tell us (McDougall, Goodliffe, Ollis & Taylor)
Groups saw it for half a second, 6 secs, or unlimited time.
- group 1: 500ms - average number of fixations = 1. 15.
- reasons given for evaluations are same when only 1-2 fixations are possible.
- may be result of retrofitting “reasons for decisions” (appeal vs. informativeness) to task demands.
- not based on changing patterns of eye fixations.
Amount of time given to look/number of fixations may not influence appeal.
Decision making
In relation to products - very conscious problem.
Cycle of:
- problem recognition
- > information search
- > evaluation of alternatives
- > product choice
- > outcomes
- > problem recognition…
Decision making: multiattribute models
Popular with market researchers.
Typically specify 3 elements of consumer evaluations:
- attributes = eg. price, brand, reputation etc.
- beliefs = extent consumer thinks brand has particular attribute.
- importance weights = importance of each attribute to consumer.
This info makes it possible to:
- spot weaknesses in brand profile.
- emphasis advantages.
- strengthen key product-attribute linkages.
- create new unique selling points.
Decision making: recap
Marketers view purchasing as a careful problem solving process.
Can identify markets, USPs, segments etc.
Seems to be a gap between intention and behaviour.
Decision making: multiattribute models - mismatches between predictions and behaviour
Fishein (1983) - first, and most influential model.
- others created to improve predictability.
These include:
- theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fisbein, 1977).
- theory f planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991).
Behaviour attitude/subjective norms/perceived behvioural control -> intention -> behaviour.
(Perceived behavioural control —> behaviour).
Mismatches between predictions and behaviour based on multi-attribute models and questionnaires arise because:
- there can be differences between intentions and actual behaviour.
- social pressure may change intentions or behaviour.
- models concentrate on product evaluation rather than buying it.
- also need to include attitudes towards websites when shopping online.
- attitudes can change for a variety of reasons.
Decision making: evaluation of alternatives
Person considers compromise of their evokes set.
Members of evoked set usually share characteristics.
The way one groups products influences which alternatives they will consider.
- evoked set = alternatives consumer knows.
- consideration set = ones actually considered.
- inept set = consumer knows about but wouldn’t consider.
- inert set = not under consideration at all.
Decision making: evaluation of alternatives - strategic implications of product grouping
- product positioning = hinges on marketer’s ability to convince consumers that product should be considered in a category.
- identifying competitors = many different products compete for membership of a category.
- exemplar producers = where a product is a good example of a category.
- locating products = product categorisation can also affect consumer’s expectations regarding places where they can locate products.
Decision making: perspectives on decision making - rational perspective
Careful and logical integration of info about a product.
Weigh up pros and cons of each alternative.
Arriving at a satisfactory decision.
Highly involved.
Decision making: perspectives on decision making - behavioural influence perspective
Decisions are a learned response to environmental cues.
Decisions influence by cues (eg. bright colours).
Low involvement.
Decision making: perspectives on decision making - experiential perspective
Selection made when highly involved but not easily explained rationality.
Routine response behaviour -> limited problem-solving -> extensive problem solving.
- low cost products -> expensive.
- frequent purchases -> infrequent.
- low involvement -> high.
- familiar product -> unfamiliar.
- little thought, search or time -> extensive.
Decision making: elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)
Communication -> attention & comprehension ->
- (systematic) -> high involvement processing -> cognitive responses -> belief and attitude change -> behaviour change.
- (heuristic) -> low involvement processing -> belief change -> behaviour change -> attitude change.
Petty, Cacioppo & Goldman (1981):
Students told uni was instituting a comprehensive exam which must be passed to graduate.
- high involvement = told this would happen before they graduate.
- low involvement = after.
Varied: quality of arguments (strong vs. weak).
- expertise of the source: from within university vs. outside.
Findings: stronger arguments from personally relevant/high involvement group.
- low involvement had stronger attitudes for both non expert and expert source.
Decision making: quick recap
2 types of processes in operation.
Rationale vs. behavioural influences.
High vs low involvement.
Fast automatic processing vs. slow effortful conscious process = heuristics.
Decision making: cognitive approaches to decision making
Kahneman (2011): thinking, fast & slow.
System 1 - fast:
- automatic.
- unconscious.
- used constantly.
- used heuristics.
- links cognitive ease to illusions of truth, pleasant feelings, appeal.
System 2 - slow:
- takes effort.
- conscious.
- used less frequently.
- “logical”.
- calculates.
Decision making: use of heuristics
= “strategy that ignores part of the info with the goal of making decisions more quickly and more accurately than complex methods” (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011).
Rely on reducing effort by: - using fewer cues. = simplifying the weighting of cues. - integrating less info. - examining fewer alternatives.
Decision making: recognition heuristic
= if one or two alternatives is recognised and other is not; infer recognised alternative has higher values with respect to the criterion (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011).
Coates et al (2004): priming familiar brand increases probability of purchase consideration.
Hoyer & Brown (1990): in blind test most people preferred higher quality peanut butter/
- change high quality label to another jar and they prefer “branded” jar.
= sensation transference.
Decision making: use of heuristics - processing theory
Alter & Oppenheimer (2009): ease with which people process info, reliably influences judgements across a broad range of dimensions.
- argues: fluency experiences creates a cue, or heuristic for judgements and decision making.
Decision making: heuristics in complex choices
Hauser et al (2009): found that sequential heuristics predict consumer choices.
Heuristic decision rules more likely when:
- they are more products.
- more features to be evaluated.
- quantifiable features more salient.
- more time pressure.
- consumer is an early phase of decision process.
- effort required to make a decision more salient.
- the above are combined forming a complex choice.
Decision making: recap - heuristics
Rely on peripheral cues - celebrity, smell/sound, known brands, previously learned/primed associations.
Ease of processing:
- fluency.
- recognition heuristic.
Decision making: choice architecture
Thater & Sunstein (2008): many ways to present choice.
- what is chosen depends on how it is presented.
Johnson et al (2012): claim there is no neutral architecture.
- all choice presentations have a (usually implicit) default.
- tools for CA fall into 2 categories:
1. tools used in structuring the choice task - (what to present to decision makers)
2. tools used in describing the choice options - (how to present it).
Decision making: structuring choice
- number of alternatives: “choice overload”; “tyranny of choice”.
- more options = cognitive burden, but increase chance of preference match - need to balance. - tech and decision:
- search engines.
- produce recommendation system.
- interactive decision aids.
- “help identify alternatives and filter out irrelevant”.
- systems can manipulate choice (eg. booking.com/airbnb). - defaults: one of the most powerful and popular choices.
- default settings - determine initial encounters with products.
- re0use defaults - come into play with subsequent product uses.
- choice option default - pre-checked boxes.
- persistent defaults - past choice remembered.
- reverting defaults - past choices deleted.
- ethical risks. - choice over time: choices often unfold gradually rather than instantly which affects choice in 3 ways:
- early positive outcomes preferred - yield to temptations and discount later outcomes.
- uncertainty about future - focus on desirable future outcomes.
- over optimism about future - assume we will accomplish more than we do. - task structure affects the search process: determines how individuals explore available options.
- simple choices = one from small set of alternatives.
- large choice sets = meed to consider role of search costs - (can be reduced by tools that translate choice into immediate salient out more successful.
