Behavioural and Physiological measures of differences in buying and selling behaviour of consumers

Abstract

Buying and selling are among the primary activities of humans that create civilizations and sustain society. The aim of the present study is to examine the buy-sell price asynchrony using behavioural and physiological measures. A series of five studies was carried out to investigate the role of the self in the buy-sell decisions of the consumers as predicted by the mere ownership effect. Study 1 was conducted to select the stimuli for the succeeding experiments. Study 2 indicated that the selling price is higher than the buying price – the endowment effect. Study 3 used eye-tracking to find that attentional focus was more on the question rather than the image, but there were no differences in buy and sell decisions. Study 4 showed no differences in a surprise recognition test of stimuli associated with buy and sell decisions. However, using a slightly different experimental procedure, Study 5 established that the recognition score was higher for stimuli associated with sell decisions rather than buy decisions, Further, this electroencephalography study showed that the ERP component CDA (contralateral delayed activity) was greater in response to the image slide in the buy block, but the question slide in the sell block. Collectively, results confirm that the mere ownership effect is an important factor in the buy-sell decisions of the consumers.