'What you say when making a consumer decision can affect how you feel not only about your choice, but also about your relationship and your partner'
New research from UConn marketing professor Danielle Brick finds that when people make purchasing decisions together, recurring communication patterns influence not only what they choose, but how satisfied they feel afterward.
Whether buying a new couch, planning a vacation, or deciding what movie to see, those choices can become surprisingly complicated when another person is involved in the decision.
"What's really interesting about this work is that it focuses on how people make decisions through spoken language. What you say when making a consumer decision can affect how you feel not only about your choice, but also about your relationship and your partner," Brick says.
Brick's work appears in the Journal of Marketing Research. She co-authored the research with professors Kelley Wight at Indiana University, Holly Howe at HEC Montreal, and Gavan Fitzsimons at Duke University.
Researchers Studied Shoppers in Store and Online
The research focuses on a common but often overlooked part of everyday life: the nuances of conversations people have with partners, family members, or friends as they work toward a shared choice.
To conduct their research, Brick and her colleagues analyzed nearly 200 joint decision conversations across married couples, friends, parents and children and siblings as they shopped for everything from flooring to windows.
The shoppers allowed them to listen to and record their conversations, providing the fodder for the research. In the in-store study context, participants used their own money to make or not make a purchase. In the online study context, participants were given a gift card to make a purchase. This allowed the researchers to observe conversations that both did and did not result in a purchase.
Brick and her colleagues identified four primary communication patterns that serve as the building blocks of those interactions. They are:
- Coordination: when people try to align their decision by asking questions, clarifying preferences, or sharing information;
- Contrast: occurs when one person introduces a different perspective or alternative, often with phrases like "but" or "what about?"
- Build: is a collaborative pattern in which one person affirms and expands on the other's idea - a kind of "yes, and" communication.
- One-sided: when one of the participants response with "whatever you want'' or a brief "OK.''
Decision-Making Doesn't Follow a Straight Path
Brick and her co-authors found that these patterns of persuasion are not equally effective in resolving a decision. For example, 'Build communication' was associated with more positive satisfaction outcomes for both the relationship and the choice itself.
By contrast, persuasion-oriented exchanges and some forms of coordination were associated with less positive satisfaction outcomes.
"Trying to 'win' the choice could come at a cost,'' she says. "Instead, you should focus on expanding each other's ideas as this tends to be more beneficial.''
The findings also challenge the idea that shared decision-making follows a tidy, linear sequence from recognizing a need to making a final choice. Instead, the research suggests that people often move back and forth across stages of the decision process, revisiting preferences, evaluating options again, and reframing what matters as the conversation unfolds.
Research May Benefit Retailers, Friendships
That discovery has practical implications for marketers, managers, and friendships.
By recognizing the communication patterns that emerge, businesses may be able to better understand where consumers are in the decision process and encourage more productive interaction. The research suggests that nudging decision partners toward more collaborative communication - especially building on one another's ideas - may improve the customer experience and lead to greater satisfaction with the final decision.
The research fits squarely within Brick's broader research agenda, which focuses on consumer relationships, consumer well-being, and shared decision-making. This new study extends that work by showing that many consumer decisions are shaped not only by what people prefer, but by how they talk through those preferences together.
For consumers, the research offers a simple but useful takeaway: when making a decision with someone else, how the conversation unfolds may matter just as much as the options that are available.
