Time and the marketplace

Abstract

Consumers often face choices between options that vary in their short- and long-term benefit. This article describes the marketing implications of what we know about how consumers make these choices. The focus is on how consumers put disproportionate weight on short-term benefits, thereby overconsuming goods offering small early benefits at a larger, later cost (vices), and underconsuming those offering large delayed benefits at a smaller, sooner cost (virtues). I examine the strategic issues surrounding the marketing of vices and virtues to consumers whose preferences change as a function of time to consumption. Special attention is paid to the ‘market for willpower’, which is the market for goods that enable sophisticated consumers to overcome their difficult-to-control drive for short-term gratification. I conclude by asking what consumers ‘really’ want, and how marketers can and should respond to these desires.