Considerations about the status quo bias and temporal orientation in purchasing and supplier selection decisions: an experimental study

Abstract

Humans are limited in their ability to collect and process information. Furthermore, an individual’s social goals and collective behaviors convey influences on behavior. Consequently, fundamental theories in the areas of cognitive psychology, social psychology, and sociology provide valuable information to the decision making observed in Operations Management (OM). The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to examine the effects of status quo bias on purchasing and supplier selection decisions. Additionally, this study investigates the influence of psychological distance on the individuals’ temporal orientation. Finally, this study tests the moderating effect of temporal orientation on the influence of status quo bias on purchasing and supplier selection decisions. To empirically verify the hypotheses, three experimental studies were carried out. This research achieved the main objective, demonstrating the influence of the status quo bias in operational context decisions empirically. These results contribute to theoretical and practical discussions for studies in Behavioral operations (BeOps). First, it was demonstrated that females’ respondents are more likely to choose the status quo alternative than male ones. Second, the preference for the status quo increases when the number of alternatives increases. Third, the maintenance of the status quo is negatively related to new supplier selection and purchasing decisions in buyer-supplier relationships, when rational decision-making and cognitive misperception explain status quo bias. Surprisingly this study finds no evidence that temporal orientation affects the negative relationship between the status quo bias and new purchasing and supplier selection decisions. Therefore, I conjecture two possibilities for results contrary to the expected. First, the temporal orientation does not affect the negative relationship between the status quo bias and the new purchasing and supplier selection decisions. Second, the scale I used to measure temporal orientation may not have been the most appropriate. Finally, I did not find an effect of the psychological distance (proximal versus distal) manipulation on individual Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC). Despite the CFC scale being widely used and evaluated, few studies were concerned with its predictors, besides not being clear which factors can change the individual concern with immediate and future consequences.