The Short‐ and Long‐Term Effects of Measuring Intent to Repurchase

Pierre Chandon, Vicki G. Morwitz, Werner J. Reinartz
2004 Journal of Consumer Research  
We compare the incidence, timing, and profitability of repeated online grocery purchases made by a cohort of consumers whose purchase intentions were measured with those of similar consumers whose intentions were not measured. We find that measuring intentions increases the likelihood of repeat purchase incidence and shortens the time until the first repeat purchase but that these two meremeasurement effects decay rapidly after 3 mo. Still, we find persisting gains in customer profitability
more » ... time because the accelerated purchases of the first 3 mo. lead to faster subsequent purchases in the remainder of the period. A s first studied in marketing by Morwitz, Johnson, and Schmittlein (hereafter called MJS; 1993), measuring purchase intentions for a product category can increase the likelihood of first-time purchasing (the mere-measurement effect) and can influence brand choice in this category (Fitzsimons and Morwitz 1996) . Recently, the focus has shifted from studying whether these effects occur to why they occur (Fitzsimons and Williams 2000; Morwitz and Fitzsimons 2004 ). Yet fundamental questions concerning the robustness of mere-measurement effects in a repeat purchase context and about their generalizability over time and over relational behaviors (such as purchase acceleration and customer profitability) remain unanswered. Although convincing, the original mere-measurement effects documented by MJS are of modest size, based on selfreported behavior, and obtained in a quasi experiment open to alternative explanations. With one exception, subsequent mere-measurement studies continued to focus on the shortterm effects of measuring intentions on first-time purchasing. The exception is a study by Dholakia and Morwitz (2002) , which found persisting mere-measurement effects
doi:10.1086/425091 fatcat:hhwi642lvrgo5fxa7jdfpfdlue