Post-Purchase Reinforcement and Back-Out Behavior

It is reasonable to predict that after a purchase a buyer would be highly receptive to advertising and sales promotion put out on the product he bought. Literature put out by the manufacturer presents favorable aspects of the product and can reassure the buyer that a wise purchase decision has been made. This hypothesis has been tentatively supported in two studies which found that automobile buyers exhibited high readership of advertisements for the make of car they had recently purchased [3, 4]. Unlike these other studies which sought to measure the purchaser's seeking of favorable information about his chosen alternative after making a major buying decision, this study sought to measure the impact of such information, specifically, the effect of post-purchase reinforcement on back-out behavior of automobile purchasers. This behavior occurs when the purchase has been made but the product has not yet been delivered, and the loss (if any) to the buyer if he should back out amounts to his deposit.' Thus, under controlled conditions where one group of purchasers receives favorable post-decision information and another group receives none, the difference in back-out rates between the two groups can be used as a measure of the effect of positive reinforcement.