Shoppers Are More Likely to Reject Offers Made Under Time Pressure

A woman carrying bags of shopping.
Giving consumers short time limits on offers means they are less likely to take them up, according to new research. (Image: via Pixabay)

Making time-limited offers is a common retail pricing strategy with shoppers. Examples of time pressure include the doorstep seller who claims that they are currently “in the area” but will not be returning, the telephone seller who makes a “special offer” that can be accepted only during that phone call, the Internet site that offers a buy-now discount, and the seller of a used car who claims that another buyer has shown great interest in it and will be returning shortly.

Because these offers deter consumers from searching for lower prices, they reduce competition between firms, and they can lead to increases in market prices. Economists who have studied time-limited offers have usually assumed that consumers are highly rational.

Prof. Robert Sugden and Dr. Mengjie Wang from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK, and Prof. Daniel Zizzo at the University of Queensland in Australia investigated whether the tendency for consumers to accept time-limited offers is intensified by behavioral factors.

Time pressure offers deter consumers from searching for lower prices and can lead to increases in market prices.
Time pressure offers deter consumers from searching for lower prices and can lead to increases in market prices. (Image: Wayne Stadler via Dreamstime)

Publishing their findings in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the authors conclude that risk aversion is the main factor behind consumers’ tendency to accept time-limited offers. Thinking about whether to accept a time-limited offer evokes a particularly intense aversion to risk, and the longer a person has to think about this decision, the more strongly this effect kicks in.

Time pressure driven by psychological factors

Dr. Wang, of UEA’s Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science and School of Economics, said:

The team conducted an experiment in which about 200 participants were required to buy a specific good and faced a sequence of offers with different prices, one of which might be time-limited. These price search problems were matched with choices between lotteries, to test whether consumers were particularly averse to the risks involved in rejecting time-limited offers.

Open tube of lipstick sits behind a small chalk tag with the words 'limited time offer' written on it.
In the experiment, participants were required to buy a specific good and faced a sequence of offers with different prices, one of which might be time-limited. (Image: Thomas Photiou via Dreamstime)

They found no evidence that the tendency for consumers to choose time-limited offers was intensified by desires to avoid regret. Surprisingly, offers were less likely to be chosen when time pressure was high than when it was low: Increasing the period during which a time-limited offer was available from 4 to 12 seconds increased the probability that the time-limited offer was chosen by 13 percent.

However, decisions about accepting or rejecting time-limited offers were very risk-averse, and more so than equivalent choices between certainties and lotteries Prof. Sugden said:

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