Friday Research: When Customers Get Interuppted..

When Will You Use This?  

Researching your customer's decision process.

What’s The Red-Letter Bite Today? 

Today we get interrupted by calls, messages, emails, notifications and everything else every other minute. How does that affect us?

Current research* examines how interuptions affect the following decisions, more precisely, whether an individual’s desire to finish an interrupted activity depends on the timing of the interruption (specifically, whether an individual’s desire to finish an interrupted activity is heightened when an interruption disrupts the most intense, important ("climatic") moments of an activity or task).

This study found that people who were interrupted during a climactic moment of a television clip, and who were prevented from watching the end of it, were more likely to make unrelated purchase decisions than their uninterrupted counterparts.

It's observed that when a climactic interruption prevents individuals from achieving closure in the interrupted domain, the resulting unsatisfied need for psychological closure can cause individuals to seek closure in totally unrelated domains. That need for closure motivates individuals to make a decision rather than remain in a state of ambiguity. Research shows that climactic interruptions could increase the likelihood that individuals would make unrelated purchase decisions rather than continue examining product alternatives.

Hi, We Are Here So You Wouldn't Finish What You Started!

Addition To Your Bag of Tricks    

This research brings some insight for the marketers, as authors say,“ ..because our findings suggest that climactic interruptions can increase the likelihood of choosing to purchase a product rather than continuing to examine alternatives, it is possible that these closure-motivated choices may increase post-purchase regret. In fact, research indicates that insufficient thinking about decision alternatives in and of itself can increase post-decision regret, even when decision outcomes are held constant. To the extent that the current research suggests that need for psychological closure may increase hasty purchase decisions, it is possible that these decisions may increase post-decision regret.”.

  

*D. Kupor, T. Reich, and B. Shiv,"Can't Finish What You Started? The Effect of Climactic Interruption on Behavior", Journal of Consumer Psychology, Upcoming 2014 {Thanks for the material}

P.S. When you’re done reading, I’d love for you to share your experience with unrelated purchase decisions and post-purchase regret? Leave a comment or Tweet me, let's chat!

P.P.S. Need some help on crafting your marketing message? Let's do this together.