The Role of Decision Importance and the Salience of Alternatives in Determining the Consistency between Consumers' Attitudes and Decisions

This research examines how the importance of a consumer decision influences attitude-decision consistency and choice in decision contexts that contain versus do not contain specified alternatives. Results demonstrate that decision importance moderates attitude-decision consistency when alternatives are not specified, but not when alternatives are specified. These results, in conjunction with the time participants devote to choice, suggest that importance plays a larger role in attitude-decision consistency when alternatives are unspecified versus specified because importance leads to greater effort in generation of alternatives when alternatives are unspecified (an unnecessary task when alternatives are specified in context). Implications for promotion are discussed.