People Are Experience Goods: Improving Online Dating with Virtual Dates
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PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCE GOODS: IMPROVING ONLINE DATING WITH VIRTUAL DATES JEANA H. FROST, ZOË CHANCE, MICHAEL I. NORTON, AND DAN ARIELY JEANA H. FROST is a Research Scientist e suggest that online dating frequently fails to meet user expecta- with PatientsLikeMe.com; W e-mail: [email protected] tions because people, unlike many commodities available for purchase online, are experience goods: Daters wish to screen potential romantic partners by ZOË CHANCE is a graduate student at the Harvard experiential attributes (such as sense of humor or rapport), but online dating Business School; e-mail: [email protected] Web sites force them to screen by searchable attributes (such as income or reli- gion). We demonstrate that people spend too much time searching for MICHAEL I. NORTON options online for too little payoff in offline dates (Study 1), in part because is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the users desire information about experiential attributes, but online dating Web Harvard Business School; e-mail: [email protected] sites contain primarily searchable attributes (Study 2). Finally, we introduce and beta test the Virtual Date, offering potential dating partners the opportu- DAN ARIELY is Professor of Marketing at nity to acquire experiential information by exploring a virtual environment in The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University; interactions analogous to real first dates (such as going to a museum), an e-mail: [email protected] online intervention that led to greater liking after offline meetings (Study 3). This work is based in part on Jeana Frost’s doctoral dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The authors thank Judith Donath, © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. Andrew Fiore, Shane Frederick, Amit Kumar, Leonard Lee, Jiwoong Shin, Juliana Smith, and Fernanda Viegas for JOURNAL OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING VOLUME 22 / NUMBER 1 / WINTER 2008 their advice and assistance. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/dir.20106 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeana H. Frost. 51 Journal of Interactive Marketing DOI: 10.1002/dir Online dating has emerged as an undoubtedly popu- experiential capability of virtual interfaces. We intro- lar way to meet potential partners: Some 11% of duce the Virtual Date, an intervention in which poten- Internet users—16 million Americans—have used an tial dating partners explore a virtual environment in online dating Web site (Madden & Lenhart, 2006). an interaction analogous to a real first date (such as The advent of online dating has both lowered the bar- going to a museum), creating an online experience rier to initiating contact (from a painful phone call to that offers an experiential preview of a real-world a click of a mouse) and simultaneously increased the interaction. number of available options. Despite this seeming promise, however, results have been decidedly mixed. People Are Experience Goods, Anecdotal evidence and market data suggest wide- Not Search Goods spread user disappointment (Egan, 2003), and gro- wth of the major online dating sites has slowed The distinction between search goods and experience (JupiterResearch, 2005). These trends are particularly goods (Nelson, 1970, 1974) is central to an under- puzzling in light of recent research demonstrating a standing of online consumer behavior. Search goods— generally positive role for the Internet in forming and detergent, dog food, and vitamins—are goods that developing platonic relationships (e.g., Amichai- vary along objective, tangible attributes, and choice Hamburger & Furnham, 2007; Kraut et al., 2002; among options can be construed as an attempt to McKenna, Green, & Gleason, 2002; Nie, 2001; Sproull, maximize expected performance along these measur- Conley, & Moon, 2005). Given the positive effects of able dimensions. Experience goods, in contrast, are the Internet on platonic social life, there appears to be judged by the feelings they evoke, rather than the great potential for the Internet to improve romantic functions they perform. Examples include movies, life as well. perfume, puppies, and restaurant meals—goods defined by attributes that are subjective, aesthetic, We suggest that the failure of online dating sites to holistic, emotive, and tied to the production of sensa- live up to user expectations is due in part to a funda- tion. Most importantly, people must be present to mental gap between the kinds of information people evaluate them; they cannot be judged secondhand both want and need to determine whether someone is (Ford, Smith, & Swasy, 1990; Holbrook & Hirschman, a good romantic match and the kind of information 1982; Li, Daugherty, & Biocca, 2001; Wright & Lynch, available on online dating profiles. Worse yet, as mar- 1995), because indirect experience can be misleading, riage continues to move from an economic exchange causing people to mispredict their satisfaction when arranged between families—based on observable they encounter that choice (Hamilton & Thompson, attributes—to a transcendental falling-in-love experi- 2007). ence—based on intangible emotional attributes—the limited information in profiles is more and more likely We propose that understanding how romantic rela- to be insufficient. Most online dating sites use a tionships are formed online can be informed by situ- “shopping” interface like that used by other commer- ating online dating on the search versus experience cial sites, in which people are classified much like any continuum—or, more specifically, by realizing that commodity, by different searchable attributes (e.g., people are the ultimate experience good. Whether height, weight, income), which can be filtered in any someone joins a dating Web site to find her soulmate way the shopper desires (see Bellman, Johnson, or a one-night stand, success is not determined solely Lohse, & Mandel, 2006). Because determining whether by her partner’s objective qualities (e.g., income and or not one likes someone romantically requires sub- height) but also by subjective qualities, based on jective knowledge about experiential attributes such moment-to-moment rapport between herself and her as rapport or sense of humor, it is perhaps not sur- potential partner. She cannot know, for instance, prising that online daters might be disappointed whether she will find a self-declared comedian funny when they are forced to screen potential partners in person, short of direct experience. Even viewing using objective searchable attributes such as income other’s impressions—via his friends’ comments on his and religion. This evident mismatch between process social networking pages—is not a sure signal that and goals makes dating a fruitful milieu in which to his sense of humor will appeal to her; although know- study online interventions designed to improve the ing others’ opinions may be helpful when pursuing 52 JOURNAL OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING Journal of Interactive Marketing DOI: 10.1002/dir a search good, it is less useful for predicting prefer- is first and foremost an experiential process that is ences for experience goods (Aggarwal & Vaidyanathan, not likely to be captured in online dating profiles 2005). The Internet’s current rules-based filters are (Study 2). Finally, we introduce and beta test our generally geared toward search goods, not experience intervention—Virtual Dates—designed to move the goods, forcing daters to hunt for partners using online dating process away from relying primarily on searchable attributes even when seeking experiential searchable attributes toward providing experiential information—as though they were buying shoes information. We assign participants to view standard online by carefully filtering for brand, price, and online dating profiles or go on Virtual Dates with indi- color—when the one attribute they care most about is viduals with whom they subsequently went on speed fit (see Bhatnagar & Ghose, 2004). dates, comparing impressions formed on Virtual Dates to those created via typical online dating In short, we suggest that user disappointment with (Study 3). online dating is due in part to a crucial mismatch between the experience of online and offline dating. STUDY 1: FRUITLESS SEARCHING IN Online dating follows an information-processing con- sumer model of choice in which each option has a set ONLINE DATING of features (e.g., height, religion, hobbies) from which In this first study, we wanted to demonstrate the consumers must create an overall impression, analo- inefficiencies of the current Internet dating search gous to attempting to predict the flavor of a packaged process, examining both the sheer extent of searching food based on its nutritional information (grams of required to meet a partner and the dissatisfaction fat, number of calories, amount of fiber, etc.) or its con- that results when people meet others whom they stituent ingredients (vanilla, curry powder, dark have screened using the current online dating search chocolate, etc.). While one might have some sense of mechanisms. how the food will taste, only sampling it can provide an accurate answer. Dating offline, on the other hand, Method and Results involves navigating the world together and sharing ϭ ϭ ϭ experiences, providing opportunities to engage in Participants (N 132; 49 male, Mage 39.4, SD direct interaction and observation, allowing individu- 11.9) completed the survey by following a link on an als to develop an integrated,