I'll have the ice cream soon and the vegetables later
Subtitle: decreasing impatience over time in online grocery orders
By: Todd Rogers, Katherine L. Milkman, and Max H. Bazerman
Contributors: Rogers, Todd; Bazerman, Max H.; Harvard Business School
Edition: Rev.
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 07-078; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 07-078
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 43
Description: How do decisions made for tomorrow or two days in advance differ from decisions made for several days in the future? Most economic models predict that decisions do not systematically differ on such short timescales. We use a novel panel data from an online grocer to conduct analyses suggesting that people are decreasingly impatient the further in the future their choices will take effect. In general, as the delay between order completion and delivery increases, we find that the same customers spend less, order a higher percentage of "should" items (e.g., vegetables), and order a lower percentage of "want" items (e.g., ice cream). However, orders placed for delivery tomorrow versus two days in the future do not show this want/should pattern, and we briefly discuss survey results suggesting a potential explanation for the nonlinearity in customers' apparent decreasing impatience.
Notes: "Revised December 2007"--Publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references.