{"database":"biostudies-literature","file_versions":[],"scores":null,"additional":{"submitter":["Devine S"],"funding":["Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada","UK Research and Innovation,United Kingdom"],"pagination":["60"],"full_dataset_link":["https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC12371001"],"repository":["biostudies-literature"],"omics_type":["Unknown"],"volume":["10(1)"],"pubmed_abstract":["The decoy effect describes a bias in which people's choices between two valuable options are swayed by a third, inferior, \"decoy\" option. Despite being documented in lab settings, relatively little work has investigated whether decoy effects occur \"in the wild\" where consumers face large, diverse choice sets. We employ a new methodology to examine the impact of decoy options on purchase decisions using a dataset of 3.6 million UK grocery-store wine transactions. Results indicate that when comparing wines that vary in quality and price across contexts, the presence of dominated (i.e., inferior) decoy options increased consumers' likelihood of choosing a target option-a hallmark of the well-documented attraction effect. The strength of these effects was modest overall (roughly 1% change in preference) and, interestingly, depended on consumers' idiosyncratic histories of experience. Our study provides a proof of principle demonstrating that these sorts of context effects are detectable in richer, complex real-world consumer choice settings."],"journal":["NPJ science of learning"],"pubmed_title":["How decoy options ferment choice biases in real-world consumer decision-making."],"pmcid":["PMC12371001"],"funding_grant_id":["MR/T043520/1)"],"pubmed_authors":["Devine S","Goulding J","Harvey J","Otto AR","Skatova A"],"additional_accession":[]},"is_claimable":false,"name":"How decoy options ferment choice biases in real-world consumer decision-making.","description":"The decoy effect describes a bias in which people's choices between two valuable options are swayed by a third, inferior, \"decoy\" option. Despite being documented in lab settings, relatively little work has investigated whether decoy effects occur \"in the wild\" where consumers face large, diverse choice sets. We employ a new methodology to examine the impact of decoy options on purchase decisions using a dataset of 3.6 million UK grocery-store wine transactions. Results indicate that when comparing wines that vary in quality and price across contexts, the presence of dominated (i.e., inferior) decoy options increased consumers' likelihood of choosing a target option-a hallmark of the well-documented attraction effect. The strength of these effects was modest overall (roughly 1% change in preference) and, interestingly, depended on consumers' idiosyncratic histories of experience. Our study provides a proof of principle demonstrating that these sorts of context effects are detectable in richer, complex real-world consumer choice settings.","dates":{"release":"2025-01-01T00:00:00Z","publication":"2025 Aug","modification":"2026-05-09T10:36:48.385Z","creation":"2026-04-08T00:48:15.566Z"},"accession":"S-EPMC12371001","cross_references":{"pubmed":["40841543"],"doi":["10.1038/s41539-025-00341-2"]}}