The Effect of Option Choice Framing on Short-Term Regret from Actions/Inactions: Implications for Marketing Strategies

This experiment examines the effect of option choice framing on short-term regret from actions and inactions, using 124 Singaporean and 96 Thai working adults who add options to a base model (additive framing) or delete options from a full model (subtractive framing) in a condominium purchase scenario. The results qualify past findings, showing that in both cultures, in additive framing, participants anticipate more regret from taking actions (adding options) than inactions, whereas in subtractive framing, they anticipate more regret from taking inactions (not deleting options) than actions. The implications for marketers are as follows. First, in the additive framing condition, to avoid regret consumers may prefer not adding options and hence lower revenues for marketers. Second, in the subtractive framing condition, to avoid regret consumers may prefer deleting options, hence lower revenues for marketers. Third, marketers can minimize consumers’ anticipated regret by, for example, allowing consumers to change their mind without any penalty after they have added/deleted options, accelerating them to make decisions so that they have less time or no time to anticipate regret, providing them with a lot of information to process so that they have little cognitive capacity left to anticipate regret, and putting them in a distracting environment (playing loud music, playing movies, and providing snacks/foods).