Online Shopping as Foraging: The Effects of Increasing Delays on Purchasing and Patch Residence

Author

Hantula, Donald A. ; Brockman, Diane Diclemente ; Smith, Carter L.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Psychol., Temple Univ., Philadelphia, PA

Volume

51

Issue

2

fYear

2008

fDate

6/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

147

Lastpage

154

Abstract

This paper extends the Behavioral Ecology of Consumption, a foraging theory model of human decision-making in an online environment, in a replication and extension of previous online foraging research. Participants shopped for music CDs in a simulated internet mall featuring five virtual music stores with delay to in-stock feedback of 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 seconds. Preference was measured as the proportion of total purchases and shopping time allocated to each store. Consistent with previous research, a hyperbolic decay function provided the best fit to the data. The results further the consumer foraging model and bolster existing evidence of the generality of hyperbolic discounting and matching in human decision-making.

Keywords

Internet; consumer behaviour; distributed decision making; purchasing; Behavioral Ecology of Consumption; Internet mall; foraging theory model; human decision-making; hyperbolic decay function; hyperbolic discounting; online shopping; patch residence; purchasing delays; virtual music stores; Biological system modeling; Consumer behavior; Decision making; Delay effects; Environmental economics; Environmental factors; Humans; Internet; Organisms; Power generation economics; Behavioral ecology; consumer behavior; delay discounting; foraging theory; matching;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0361-1434

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPC.2008.2000340

Filename

4539489