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How buyers forecast: Buyer–seller relationship as a boundary condition of the impact bias

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An Erratum to this article was published on 13 April 2011

Abstract

People frequently overestimate the impact of an event when they imagine it, relative to when they actually experience it. This phenomenon, known as the impact bias, has been well established as an intrapersonal phenomenon. We extend it to the inherently interpersonal marketing setting involving buyer–seller dyads in which the two entities are bound by a relationship, and propose a moderating effect based on the strength of the buyer–seller relationship. An online panel study and three laboratory experiments provide converging evidence such that the impact bias emerges when the buyer–seller relationship is strong, but disappears when the relationship is weak.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marketing Department, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, 1705 College Street, Columbia, SC, 29212, USA

    Ashwani Monga

  2. Marketing Department, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Haipeng (Allan) Chen

  3. Marketing Department, University of Miami, 501 Kosar/Epstein, Coral Gables, FL, 33124, USA

    Michael Tsiros

  4. Tassos Papastratos Research Professor of Marketing, ALBA Graduate Business School, Athens, Greece

    Michael Tsiros

  5. Harvard Business School India Research Center, Mahindra Towers, Worli, Mumbai, India

    Mona Srivastava

Authors
  1. Ashwani Monga
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  2. Haipeng (Allan) Chen
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  3. Michael Tsiros
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  4. Mona Srivastava
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ashwani Monga.

Additional information

An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11002-011-9139-0.

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Monga, A., (Allan) Chen, H., Tsiros, M. et al. How buyers forecast: Buyer–seller relationship as a boundary condition of the impact bias. Mark Lett 23, 31–45 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-010-9133-y

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