Order in choice: effects of serial position on preferences.
When several choice options are sampled one at a time in a sequence and a single choice of the best option is made at the end of the sequence, which location in the sequence is chosen most often? We report a large-scale experiment that assessed tasting preferences in choice sets of two, three, four, or five wines. We found a large primacy effect-the first wine had a large advantage in the end-of-sequence choice. We also found that participants who were knowledgeable about wines showed a recency effect in the longer sequences. We conclude with a process model that explains our findings.
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. amantonakis@brocku.ca
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D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention; D002755:Choice Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D008875:Middle Aged; D011338:Probability Theory; D012691:Serial Learning; D013649:Taste; D014920:Wine; D055815:Young Adult