It Takes One to Buy but Two to Say Goodbye: Preferring Others’ Involvement at Different Customer Decision Journey Stages

Although the customer decision journey has traditionally been conceptualized in terms of individual consumers, each decision stage can also be social. What influences consumers to make product decisions solitarily versus jointly (e.g., with household partners)? This research examines whether consumers’ decision-making preference (solitarily vs. jointly) differs by decision stage: acquisition versus disposal. Seven experiments examining a wide range of household products show that consumers exhibit a robust difference across acquisition and disposal stages: they prefer to make decisions jointly with household partners (vs. solitarily) more so for disposal than for acquisition. This difference occurs in part because disposal decisions are perceived as more permanent, heightening the perceived social risk of not involving household partners. Accordingly, this difference is mitigated either when acquisition decisions are permanent or when considering potential joint decision-making with others involving little perceived risk of non-engagement (i.e., non-cohabiting friends). Finally, consumers likely overestimate the risk of not engaging their partners for disposal decisions: at the disposal stage (but not acquisition stage), focal decision-makers preferred joint (vs. solo) decision-making more than their partners actually wanted to be involved. Altogether, this research offers insights into factors shaping joint (vs. solo) decision-making preferences and the least-understood decision stage—disposal.