Why We Buy Phones We Don't Really Need

Did you recently buy a new iPhone? You may be programmed to upgrade your smartphone irrespective of whether you need it or not. Decades of research supports the theory that people tend to rely on comparisons when making decisions, researchers said. However, when one of their options is perceived upgrade over the status quo, consumer’s rationality disappears. Marketing professor Aner Sela from the University of Florida and Robyn LeBoeuf of Washington University in the US examined the phenomenon of “comparison neglect”, where people favour an upgraded product without evaluating the one they own. The researchers conducted studies of more than 1,000 smartphone users aged between 18 and 78. “We were not asking people to recall existing features from memory. We put then in front of them, but unless we tell them to compare, they do not do it. They do not use the information in the way they themselves say they should be using it. That’s what makes this so surprising,” Sela said, adding that comparison neglect only occurs when a perceived upgrade is one of the options.