Choice under incomplete information on incumbents: Why consumers with stronger preferences are more likely to abandon their prior choices
研究发现，当消费者对已有选择（如在购物车中的商品）的某些属性信息缺失而竞争对手信息完整时，偏好更强的消费者反而更可能放弃该选择，原因是认知失调加剧。
Abstract Consumers often encounter information about new brands that is not available for their preliminary or prior choices. For example, continued browsing might expose consumers to information that is unknown for an option they already placed in their shopping cart. How might preference strength affect their reactions to such missing information on their prior choices? Much research suggests that consumers with strong prior preferences are likely to employ motivated reasoning to bolster and retain the preliminary choice. However, we document a heretofore unexamined condition under which those with relatively stronger prior preferences for an incumbent are more likely to abandon it than those with weaker prior preferences. We argue that this occurs because those with relatively stronger (vs. weaker) prior preferences experience more cognitive dissonance when information on new attributes is missing on just the incumbent but not on its competitors.