Consumer choice

Simonson has studied both preferences that are created "on the fly" when people make choices and predetermined preference elements that reflect people's habits, predispositions, and genes. He began studying consumer choice in 1987. Simonson's doctoral dissertation introduced the notion that consumers select the options that are supported by the best reasons or justifications, rather than the options that maximize utility. He demonstrated the "compromise effect", whereby consumers often select the middle or, alternatively, an "extreme" option in a set regardless of its real values.^[1] Consumers often rely on a comparison with the options they encounter, and "compromise" because it is the easiest to justify and least likely to be criticized.^[2] He also showed how consumers use irrelevant product features to determine an option's attractiveness. For example, offering consumers a product "bonus" (e.g., getting the option to pay for a collector's plate when buying a product) that many regard as unneeded leads consumers to reject that brand and prefer a competing option.^[2]

Simonson also demonstrated that the mere fact that consumers buy multiple products at the same time (e.g., several cartons of yogurt for several days) causes them to choose more variety than they would have selected had they bought just one product each time.^[3]

Anticipating regret

Anticipating the possibility of regret tends to lead consumers to buy a product that is on "sale" now instead of waiting for a better "sale" later, and to choose a well-known, expensive brand over a lesser-known, less expensive brand. When making risky choices, anticipating regret leads to the opposite effect than anticipating responsibility or blame.

Idiosyncratic fit heuristic

Kivetz and Simonson showed that people tend to put too much weight when making choices on product aspects that fit them better than others, referred to as the "Idiosyncratic Fit Heuristic." They demonstrated the implications of this tendency (or heuristic) with respect to participation in loyalty programs and the evaluation of other offers and opportunities.

Highlighting versus balancing and ratings versus choice

Dhar and Simonson examined conditions that lead consumers to either "go all the way" (e.g., buy a tasty but unhealthy entree and also tasty but unhealthy dessert), referred to as highlighting, versus trying to balance things out (e.g., on a particular trip, flying first class but taking an inexpensive shuttle bus to the airport). Nowlis and Simonson examined the different consumer preferences that emerge from rating of individual options as opposed to choosing between options.

Expectation and satisfaction

As Ofir and Simonson showed, telling customers before a service encounter or a shopping experience that they would later be asked to evaluate that experience causes them to be less satisfied, and customers who state their expectations from a service before the experience are also less satisfied.

Inherent preferences

Simonson has argued that it is meaningful to assume that consumers have dormant preferences for product configurations even before the products embedding those preferences exist. For example, consumers may have a dormant preference for a licorice candy even before ever trying such a candy and they might have a preference for a videogame system using a motion-sensitive remote even before such a game system was invented. The ultimate inherent preferences are those that are largely heritable. In particular, initial evidence obtained by Simonson and Sela indicates that many consumer preferences (e.g., for compromise options, pleasurable versus useful products, chocolate, jazz, science fiction movies, and hybrid cars) are significantly heritable.