The Mere‐Measurement Effect: Why Does Measuring Intentions Change Actual Behavior?

Abstract

Recent research has demonstrated that merely measuring an individual's purchase intentions changes his or her subsequent behavior in the market. Several different alternative explanations have been proposed to explain why this "mere-measurement effect" occurs. However, these explanations have not been tested to date. The purpose of this article is to test several competing explanations for why measuring general intentions to purchase (e.g., How likely are you to buy a car?) changes specific brand-level behavior (e.g., which specific brand of car is purchased). The results provide a clearer understanding of the cognitive mechanism through which the mere-measurement effect operates. The results show that when asked to provide general intentions to select a product in a given category, respondents are more likely to choose options toward which they hold positive and accessible attitudes, and are less likely to choose options for which they hold negative and accessible attitudes, compared to a control group of participants who are not asked a general intentions question. These results provide support for the conjecture that asking a general purchase intent question influences behavior by changing the accessibility of attitudes toward specific options in the category.

The question–behavior effect: Genuine effect or spurious phenomenon? A systematic review of randomized controlled trials with meta-analyses.

“…This may thereby increase the salience of beliefs about specific features or aspects of performing that behavior (Morwitz & Fitzsimons, 2004). In a similar way, measurement can also form attitudes towards the behavior itself and/or make specific aspects of performing a behavior more accessible, thereby fostering performance (Morwitz & Fitzsimons, 2004). It is possible that the mere fact of being measured influences the formation of judgments and/or accessibility of these for respondents (Chandon, Morwitz, & Reinartz, 2005).…”

“…This has been called the mere measurement effect (Morwitz, Johnson, & Schmittlein, 1993;Sherman, 1980) or, more recently, the "question-behavior effect (QBE)" (Ayres et al, 2013;Godin, Bélanger-Gravel, Vézina-Im, Amireault, & Bilodeau, 2012). The QBE has been reported for different types of behavior including consumer and voting behavior (Chapman, 2001;Morwitz & Fitzsimons, 2004;Spangenberg, Sprott, Grohmann, & Smith, 2003).…”

Promoting the return of lapsed blood donors: A seven-arm randomized controlled trial of the question–behavior effect.

“…At the methodological level, the modest response rate, the small number of items used to augment the intention questions, and the lack of control over how carefully participants read or completed the questionnaire could all have played a role. Assuming that heightened accessibility of the underlying attitude explains the impact of asking intentions questions on subsequent donation behavior (Morwitz & Fitzsimons, 2004;Wood, Conner, Sandberg, Godin, & Sheeran, Article submitted for publication), it is possible our interrogative intentions, regret plus intention, or positive self-image plus intention manipulations were not sufficiently strong to increase accessibility beyond the level engendered by a standard, intentiononly QBE intervention. In sum, although the present study finds support for the QBE in promoting registrations to give blood by lapsed donors, we obtained no consistent evidence that the QBE can be enhanced using the variations tested here.…”

A Motivational Account of the Question-Behavior Effect

“…The occurrence of this effect also has been investigated in both laboratory (Fitzsimons and Williams 2000;Levav and Fitzsimons 2006) and field Reinartz 2004, 2005;Greenwald et al 1987;Obermiller and Spangenberg 2000) settings. It holds in a wide variety of situations, including socially desirable (e.g., recycling) and undesirable (e.g., cheating) behaviors, and for purchases in various product categories, both durable and nondurable (Chandon et al 2004;Morwitz et al 1993).The three processes most frequently shown empirically to contribute to the occurrence of the question-behavior effect are (1) attitude accessibility (Morwitz and Fitzsimons 2004), (2) cognitive dissonance (Spangenberg et al 2003), and (3) response fluency (Janiszewski and Chandon 2007). The attitude accessibility account holds that answering intention questions makes underlying attitudes toward the target behavior more accessible, which results in a change in the target behavior in line with the valence of the attitude that became more accessible (Fitzsimons and Moore 2008;Morwitz and Fitzsimons 2004).…”