JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Quantitative information can appear in different units (e.g., 7-year warranty p 84-month warranty). This article demonstrates that attribute differences appear larger on scales with a higher number of units; expressing quality information on such an expanded scale makes consumers switch to a higher-quality option. Testifying to its practical importance, expressing the energy content of snacks in kilojoules rather than kilocalories increases the choice of a healthy snack. The unit effect occurs because consumers focus on the number rather than the type of units in which information is expressed (numerosity effect). Therefore, reminding consumers of alternative units in which information can be expressed eliminates the unit effect. Finally, the unit effect moderates relative thinking: consumers are more sensitive to relative attribute differences when the attribute is expressed on expanded scales. The relation with anchoring and implications for temporal discounting and loyalty programs are discussed. The University of Chicago Press

Previous research on attribute framing has shown that people often infer higher quantity from larger numbers, usually with the assumption that the units used to specify this information elicit the same meanings. Drawing on literature on categorization and numerical cognition, the authors challenge this assumption and show that consumers often have preset units for attribute levels that strike an optimal balance between a preference for small numbers and the need for accuracy (study 1a). As such, these default units appear commonly (study 1b). Specifying positive attributes in default units renders products' evaluation more favorable, even if such specification lowers the nominal value of the attributes (studies 2-4). This effect disappears if participants attribute metacognitive feelings generated by default units to an irrelevant source (study 3). Study 5 shows that a default unit effect is more likely in single evaluation mode, but a numerosity effect may reemerge in joint evaluations. 4 Consumers often confront quantitative product information during their purchase decisions and may even consider it more informative than their own direct experience with the product (Hsee et al. 2009). Despite the clear importance of quantitative information in consumer decisions, relatively little research investigates the potential influence of the unit in which such information is specified. For example, do consumers' evaluations of a cell phone vary if its warranty is expressed in years or days? Normatively, specifying an attribute in an alternative unit should not influence product evaluations, but an emerging research stream suggests that consumers show different preferences when quantitative information is expressed in alternative units (Burson, Larrick, and Lynch 2009;Monga and Bagchi 2012;Pandelaere, Briers, and Lembregts 2011;Zhang and Schwarz 2012).Specifically, when an attribute description uses a contracted scale (e.g., quality rating on a 10-point scale) rather than an expanded one (e.g., quality rating on a 1000-point scale), consumers perceive the difference between two options as greater in the latter situation (Pandelaere et al. 2011). Research on medium maximization and loyalty programs further shows that consumers prefer rewards expressed in larger numbers, even if the outcomes are identical (Bagchi and Li 2011;Hsee et al. 2003), mainly because people rely too much on the sheer number and ignore the unit that specifies the attribute.Although this converging evidence indicates that consumers infer bigger quantities from bigger numbers, prior research seems to assume that the units for conveying information do not differ in evoked meaning, such that the choice of specific unit to express attribute levels may seem arbitrary. In contrast, we argue that for many attribute levels, default units exist that represent the units most people would use to express information on a particular attribute. For example, consumers probably are more accustomed to see warranty information expressed in years rather than in da...

Recent research on the unit effect has suggested that consumers tend to ignore relevant unit information and over‐rely on numeric magnitudes in judgments (e.g., perceiving the difference between 700 and 900 on a 1000‐point quality scale to be larger than the difference between 7 and 9 on a 10‐point scale). The current work investigates the nature of the unit effect by studying the role of different modes of evaluation, and types of information processing, on the unit effect. Specifically, three studies demonstrate that the unit effect occurs when options are evaluated simultaneously and attenuated when options are evaluated sequentially. The current article builds on research concerning comparative versus selective information processing. It demonstrates that, when information is processed in a comparative rather than selective manner, common elements in the decision (i.e., units) are more likely to be edited out, resulting in the unit effect.

Despite the ubiquity of numerical information in consumers' lives, prior research has provided limited insights to marketers about when numerical information exerts greater impact on decisions. This study offers evidence that judgments involving numerical information can be affected by consumers' sense of personal control over the environment. A numerical attribute's format communicates the extent to which the magnitude of a benefit is predictable (Study 1a), such that people who experience a control threat and want to see their external environment as predictable (Study 1b) rely on point value (vs. range) information as a general signal that the environment is predictable (Study 2). A personal control threat changes consumers' preferences as a function of whether the numerical information appears as a point value or a range (Studies 3-4). This heightened focus on format may lessen the impact of a product benefit's predicted magnitude, if a lower magnitude is specified in a more precise format (Study 5). Study 6 provides first evidence that the interactive effect of personal control levels and numerical formats can affect consequential choices.

Consumers typically infer greater quantity from larger numbers. For instance, a 500 gram box of chocolates appears heavier than a .5 kilogram box. By expressing quantities in alternative units or attribute dimensions, one can represent an otherwise identical quantity in a more versus less discretized manner (e.g., a box containing 25 chocolates vs. a box weighing 500 grams). Seven experimental studies show that a difference between more discretized quantities (e.g., 25 vs. 50 chocolates) appears larger relative to a difference between less discretized quantities (e.g., 500 grams vs. 1,000 grams), above and beyond effects of number magnitude. More discretized quantity expressions enhance the consumers' ability to discriminate between choice options and can also nudge consumers to more favorable choices. Because more discretized quantities are more evaluable, expressing a quantity in terms of a collection of elements particularly helps individuals who are less numerically proficient. By identifying how discretization functions as a novel antecedent of evaluability and by distinguishing two different conceptualizations of numerosity (i.e., symbolic and perceptual numerosity), this article draws important connections between the numerical cognition literature and General Evaluability Theory.