Time and Outcome Valuation: Implications for Marketing Decision Making

Both marketing managers and consumers must make decisions for which the good and bad outcomes may occur at various points in time in the future. A model of time and outcome valuation (TOV) is developed and shown to expand and complement a variety of marketing models and theories, including exchange models, salesforce motivation models, and decision calculus models. The TOV model is derived from six basic assumptions. From the assumptions a series of managerially important decision phenomena are described, including individual traps and fences, speedup costs, delay charge effects, and future optimism. A series of managerial propositions on the impact of the timing of outcomes on marketing decision making is also developed from the TOV model.