When Electronic Recommendation Agents Backfire: Negative Effects on Choice Satisfaction, Attitudes, and Purchase Intentions

Abstract

Internet retailers offer consumers the opportunity to choose from a previously unparalleled selection of products. To help consumers navigate this sea of information, many websites provide electronic recommendation agents that ask users questions about their preferences for product attributes and then rate and rank order the available products on the basis of their responses. In an era in which consumers often feel overwhelmed by choice, previous research has hailed electronic recommendation agents as coming to the rescue by offering a quick and efficient means for consumers to narrow their consideration sets. However, in this article we report the results of an experiment in which use of an electronic recommendation agent negatively impacted participants' long-term choice satisfaction, attitudes, and purchase intentions, in addition to other managerially relevant variables. The data support our hypothesis that use of an electronic recommendation agent leads consumers to overweight utilitarian product attributes and underweight hedonic product attributes in choice.