Coping With Complexity: A Selective Sampling Account of Consideration Set Formation for Product Bundles

Consumers frequently encounter a variety of products to choose from and, to simplify decisions, many opt to only consider a subset of potential products on offer—the consideration set. The current study proposes a selective sampling account of consideration set formation when faced with a large variety of complex products and examines its implications. Across five studies, participants formed consideration sets for a variety of bundled products. Converging evidence from behavior and computational modeling has revealed that participants likely use selective attention in forming consideration sets among complex products. Consequently, the likelihood of certain bundles being included in the consideration set over others is modulated by the distribution of values among the most or least important items in the bundle, as well as by the display format. The effect of selective attention on consideration set inclusion in turn contributes to a higher likelihood of choosing that product over a similar but novel option. We conclude that consumers faced with a large variety of complex products often reduce processing demands by discounting seemingly less-relevant information, which could lead to choice biases, whereby a product bundle is preferred because of the subset of information that has been selectively attended to.