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Do busy consumers prefer new products? A study on the effect of a busy mindset on the evaluation of new products

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Abstract

This paper explores how the busy mindset, a common mindset in modern society, affects consumers’ evaluations of new products. It proposes that a busy mindset increases the consumer’s evaluation of new products and outlines the mediating role of self-efficacy and the moderating role of perceived economic mobility. The study enriches the research on busy mindsets and new product evaluations and makes practical contributions to enterprises in management and marketing. The paper used three formal experiments (Ns = 196, 84, 277). Participants in studies 1 and 2 were students recruited from different colleges in Guangzhou city, China. The sample in study 3 were adults from all over China recruited from www.wjx.cn. This research shows that activating participants’ busy mindsets will increase their evaluations of new products, with self-efficacy as the mediator and economic mobility as the moderator. There may still be other mediating explanations, such as a sense of control. Meanwhile, this study’s current manipulation method of busyness mainly focuses on writing tasks; thus, researchers can adopt more new manipulation methods of busyness in a realistic context. Marketers can improve consumers’ evaluations and attitudes to new products by stimulating their busy mindsets and briefly activating their highly perceived economic mobility. Unlike previous studies, this research distinguishes between time pressure and a busy mindset. Meanwhile, our results show that the effect of a busy mindset differs from the effect of time pressure on new product evaluation.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the Figshare repository, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21982517.

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Acknowledgements

The Major Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (18ZDA062). funded this study.

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  1. Department of Marketing, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou city, China

    Chen Yang & Shiyan Tao

  2. Guangdong Open University, Guangzhou city, China

    Yingying Cai

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  1. Chen Yang
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Correspondence to Yingying Cai.

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Yang, C., Tao, S. & Cai, Y. Do busy consumers prefer new products? A study on the effect of a busy mindset on the evaluation of new products. Curr Psychol 43, 6321–6337 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04781-0

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