Exclude or Include? Consideration Set Strategies and the Choice Process

SESSION OVERVIEW Decision making research shows that there are two ways to narrow down a set of options—an include and an exclude strategy—and that they can have systematic consequences on consideration set construction and choice (Heller, Levin, and Goransson 2002). Related research has also used the terms accept, select, choose, or retain versus reject or eliminate to refer to a choice between two (or three) options (e.g., Meloy and Russo 2004; Ordóñez et al. 1999; Shafir 1993). This session will bring these two research streams—which have predominately been investigated separately—together to find common ground and promising avenues for future research. Across the three papers we investigate a) what factors affect the use of include and exclude strategies (paper 2), b) how these strategies affect the weighting of attributes and the composition of consideration sets (papers 1 and 2), and c) how these strategies affect final choice and consumer satisfaction (papers 2 and 3). The first paper, by Irwin and Naylor, investigates the influence of include and exclude strategies on attribute weighting, demonstrating that forming a consideration set by excluding (vs. including) alternatives results in greater weighting of ethical attributes. Interestingly, they also show that consumers judge others’ behavior more negatively if they exclude ethical product alternatives. The second paper, by Goodman and Broniarczyk, proposes that, contrary to the findings of prior research, an exclude strategy may not be the default strategy when forming a consideration set. They provide evidence that consumers are more likely to use an include strategy as the assortment size increases and that this strategy choice can have subsequent effects on consideration set formation. They also provide evidence that the use of an include strategy can increase decision difficulty and regret in the final choice phase. The third paper, by Machin, focuses on including and excluding in the choice phase (termed selecting and rejecting) and finds that rejection can lead to greater satisfaction than selection. Five studies, using actual and imagined consumption experiences, identify two mediating processes and two moderators, and show that a rejection(versus selection-) based decision strategy increases negative thoughts about foregone options. This symposium provided a unique opportunity for researchers to broaden the traditional focus of the include/exclude and reject/select domains. The symposium format allowed researchers to explore alternative ways of understanding differences in decision strategies and how these strategies can affect consumer consideration set construction and choice and to discuss how to blend these two streams of research. In addition, the symposium was especially important because it addressed other current consumer issues: how consumers use and weight ethical attributes in choice, how consumers choose decision strategies, and consumer satisfaction. Researchers interested not only in judgment and decision making, but also in ethical attributes and choice, consideration set satisfaction, and satisfaction, were particularly attracted to this session. The papers presented and the insightful discussion provided by Lisa Bolton went beyond an exploration of the include/exclude phenomenon to create a lively discussion for fruitful avenues of future research. EXTENDED ABSTRACTS