THE EFFECT OF COMMON AND UNIQUE FEATURES IN CONSUMER CHOICE

Consumer choice often involves a comparison among the available altern atives. Recent research finds that features shared by alternatives are canceled and greater weight is placed on the unique features in choos ing among the alternatives provided. Building on this research, the au thors propose that the attractiveness of the choice set can be enhance d or reduced by altering which features appear unique. In the first st udy, this proposition is tested for choice problems in which subjects choose or delay choice between pairs of alternatives that have either shared bad features and unique good features (unique good pairs) or un ique bad features and shared good features (unique bad pairs). As pred icted, a greater percentage of subjects chose an alternative when ther e were unique good pairs than when there were unique bad pairs. A seco nd study allowed subjects to switch from their initial choice to a new alternative with both unique good and unique bad features. The likeli hood of switching to a new alternative was greater for subjects who ma de the initial choice from unique bad pairs. A third study used the ch oice context to increase the attractiveness of a specific alternative by making its good features appear unique. Finally, another study used think-aloud protocols to gain insights into the underlying mechanism.