Newman and Staelin (1971) point to a lack of research addressing the important questions of “How long are buyers ‘in process’ on their purchasing decisions?” and “What factors are related to differences in decision time?” Unfortunately, very little attention has been paid to this important research area during the more than two decades following Newman and Staelin's work. Accordingly, the authors develop a theory of the evolution of choice decisions for consumer durable products. This theory addresses information acquisition behavior and the duration of the purchase deliberation process itself. From this general theory, hypotheses pertaining to the duration of the deliberation process are tested using new car purchase survey data.
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