Squeezed: Effects of Constraint on Consumer Planning

This research investigates the relationship between different types of consumer planning and resource constraint. The connection between resource constraint and planning has been acknowledged in previous research (Lynch et al. 2010; Spiller 2011) but has not been explored or analyzed in detail. Furthermore, in contrast to the notion that planning is a unidimensional phenomenon (Lynch et al. 2010), we differentiate between two psychologically distinct types of planning: “efficiency planning” and “priority planning.” Efficiency planning is intended to yield resource savings by accomplishing a goal as efficiently as possible, with the aim to avoid opportunity costs entirely. For instance, consumers ‘trip-chain’ to accomplish several shopping goals without wasting travel time (Brooks, Kaufmann, and Lichtenstein 2004). In contrast, priority planning requires deciding what to forego given current constraints and necessitates direct consideration of opportunity costs. Whereas efficiency planning concerns local considerations relevant to the current goal, priority planning weighs countervailing goals against one another. For instance, given only an hour to accomplish numerous shopping goals, a consumer might decide that not everything can get done and forego visiting the shoe store. These two kinds of planning are connected in that both are responses to resource constraint (or lack of resource slack; Zauberman and Lynch 2005). The difference is that efficiency planning is relevant when savings in the resource are precious, but there is no consideration of competing goals. Prioritization comes when one realizes that the resource is so constrained that tradeoffs have to be made.