Push It Cross the Finish Line—Designing Online Interfaces to Induce Choice Closure at the Postdecision Prepurchase Stage

As e-commerce and mobile commerce become prevalent, a notable issue indicating a lack of choice closure is that consumers do not complete their purchases after choosing a product (e.g., shopping cart abandonment). Choice closure refers to the psychological process by which decision makers come to perceive a decision to be complete and settled. To foster choice closure, online interface designs hold promising merits in terms of flexible implementations and practical implications. Drawing upon cognitive dissonance theory and self-justification theory, we examine how interface designs can tackle consumers’ negative cognitions to promote choice closure at the postdecision prepurchase stage, whereas the extant literature focuses mainly on enhancing consumers’ positive cognitions leading to their decision satisfaction. Particularly, we investigate the effects of online interface designs on reducing cognitive dissonance (i.e., a negative cognition as an antecedent of perceived choice closure) and examine the relationships between this construct, perceived choice closure, and decision satisfaction. We conducted a series of controlled experiments in a simulated e-commerce site by designing and presenting interface cues as direct and social decision reinforcements at a postdecision prepurchase stage. Our results attest to (1) the effectiveness of the proposed reinforcement cues for inducing choice closure via reduced cognitive dissonance and (2) the significant role of choice closure for consumers’ satisfaction with their decisions in online settings where product consumption/testing is often unfeasible. Theoretical and practical contributions are elaborated.

History: Suprateek Sarker, Senior Editor; Yili (Kevin) Hong, Associate Editor.

Funding: Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72071172] and the C. Michael Armstrong Business Chair Professorship at the Farmer School of Business, Miami University is gratefully acknowledged.