Mental Budgeting in Consumer Practice the Role of Product Typicality in the Mental Budgeting Process
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Mental budgeting in consumer practice The role of product typicality in the mental budgeting process Name: David Jansen Student number: s4484711 Master Business Administration: Marketing Supervisor: prof. dr. G. Antonides (Gerrit) Second examiner: dr. C. Horváth (Csilla) 1 Abstract Previous research on mental budgeting has shown the existence of certain mental budgets. Up until now, it remained unclear how exactly consumers allocate expenses to certain spending categories in practice, and what role product typicality might play in it (Question 1). To improve our understanding of the mechanisms that might underly the mental budgeting process, 17 in- depth interviews were conducted in which participants were given the task to allocate 20 different expenses to spending categories they used in real life. Via this approach, the logic and reasoning behind several allocation decisions was assessed. Interesting motivations for using budgets were discovered, as well as the reasoning behind the formation of certain budgets. Different types of judgments and considerations were discovered as well, providing insight into how these might influence consumer allocation decisions. Overall, the results indicate that product typicality played an important role in the allocation of expenses. Marketers are often capable of framing their offerings in a way that could make them more or less typical of a spending category. Typical expenses often require less effort to be allocated to a spending category compared to less typical expenses. Via certain product cues, marketers could suggest alternative ways to post an expense, potentially increasing perceived product typicality and even buying probability. To discover whether the concepts of product typicality, effort during allocation, and buying probability were related to one another (Question 2), a mixed within- and between-subjects experiment was created, and data was collected via a survey. Results indicate that a product cue was indeed capable of impacting product typicality assessments and increasing buying probability ratings. However, the usefulness of these cues depended on the type of expense being judged. Results also indicate that the relatedness of these concepts was especially relevant for expenses occurring relatively infrequently. 2 Table of contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Literature review ............................................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Mental budgeting as part of mental accounting............................................................................ 8 2.2 Mental budgeting .......................................................................................................................... 8 2.3 Functions of mental budgeting ................................................................................................... 10 2.4 Mental budgeting visualized ...................................................................................................... 12 2.5 Product typicality ....................................................................................................................... 13 2.6 Ease of tracking ongoing expenses............................................................................................. 14 2.7 Graphical model ......................................................................................................................... 16 3. Methods .......................................................................................................................................... 17 3.1 Allocation task ............................................................................................................................ 17 3.2 Between-subjects design ............................................................................................................ 19 3.3 Sample ........................................................................................................................................ 21 3.4 Research ethics ........................................................................................................................... 22 4. Results ............................................................................................................................................ 24 4.1 Spending categories: part 1 ........................................................................................................ 24 4.2 Thematic analysis ....................................................................................................................... 27 4.2.1 Open coding ............................................................................................................................... 27 4.2.2 Further refinement ...................................................................................................................... 28 4.2.3 Related codes .............................................................................................................................. 29 4.3 Between-subjects design ............................................................................................................ 35 4.3.1 Spending categories: part 2 ........................................................................................................ 36 4.3.2 Tests of within- and between subjects ........................................................................................ 38 5. General discussion .......................................................................................................................... 45 5.1 Managerial implications ............................................................................................................. 48 5.2 Limitations and future research suggestions .............................................................................. 49 References ............................................................................................................................................... 51 Appendices .............................................................................................................................................. 56 EXPLORATIVE MINDMAP ........................................................................................................ 56 RESEARCH ADJUSTMENTS ...................................................................................................... 56 WHATSAPP PRE-SELECTION PROTOCOL .................................................................................. 57 EXPENSE ALLOCATION PROTOCOL ......................................................................................... 58 EXPERIMENT PROTOCOL ......................................................................................................... 59 PART ONE EXPENDITURES ....................................................................................................... 61 PART TWO EXPENDITURES ...................................................................................................... 62 THE E-MAIL ............................................................................................................................. 62 RANDOMIZATION .................................................................................................................... 64 INITIAL PROJECT PLAN ............................................................................................................ 64 3 SPENDING CATEGORIES .......................................................................................................... 65 TRANSCRIPTS .......................................................................................................................... 71 LIST OF CODES ........................................................................................................................ 71 ATLAS.TI OPEN CODING PROCESS ........................................................................................... 72 COLLECTED DATA ................................................................................................................... 72 4 1. Introduction The Dutch Rabobank has recently introduced a new feature to their Mobile App called “Where does my money go?” (Rabobank, 2020). This feature fictionally allocates users’ expenses to corresponding categories, providing them with an overview of where their money is going. It is a recent technological development that facilitates a process better known as “mental budgeting.” But why would it be interesting to know where your money is going? A majority of consumers will find there are more ways to spend their money than they have available resources. This means that making decisions on how to handle one’s money when being exposed to a wide variety of buying decisions and competing products can be difficult. To simplify these spending decisions, some people utilize “mental accounts” to oversee and manage their income and expenses (Cheema & Soman, 2006). The concept of mental accounting is about the psychological separation of economic categories (Thaler, 1985; 1999). Contrary to the economic assumption that money is fungible, literature on mental accounting shows that the