14791838, 2022, 4, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cb.2032 by Indian Institute Of Management Lucknow, Wiley Online Library on [22/11/2022].

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Received: 23 June 2021 Revised: 23 December 2021 Accepted: 13 January 2022
DOI: 10.1002/cb.2032

ACADEMIC PAPER

Effortless online shopping? How online shopping contexts

prime heuristic processing

Jo~ao Niza Braga1 | Sofia Jacinto2,3,4

1
 lica Lisbon School of Business and
Cato
Economics, Universidade Cato lica Portuguesa, Abstract
Lisbon, Portugal Online shopping is often motivated by the opportunity to save resources due to its high
2
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL),
convenience and accessibility. We thus propose that online-shopping contexts can prime
CIS-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal
3
FHNW, University of Applied Sciences, Olten, low effort processing, which increase heuristic decisions, when compared with offline
Switzerland contexts. Four experimental studies test this hypothesis. Study 1 shows that consumers
4
 lica Lisbon School of Business and
Cato
expect to spend fewer resources in online than in offline shopping decisions. Studies
Economics, University of Bern, Bern,
Switzerland 2 to 4 show that priming an online (vs. offline) shopping context increases reliance on
heuristic cues in probability judgments (Study 2) and in product choices (Studies 3 and 4).
Correspondence
Jo~ao Niza Braga, Cato
lica Lisbon School of Results further show that systematic processing of relevant nonheuristic information is
Business & Economics, Universidade Cato  lica
reduced after priming online-shopping contexts and suggest that resource-saving expec-
Portuguesa, Palma de Cima, 1649-023 Lisbon,
Portugal. tations associated to online-shopping mediate attitudes toward systematic-options. This
Email: joaonizabraga@ucp.pt
research brings novel and important contributions by investigating the role of online
Funding information shopping contexts on the activation of resource-saving expectations and on the use
Fundaç~ao Bial, Grant/Award Number: 85/14;
heuristic cues in consumer decisions. Limits and implications are discussed.
Fundaç~ao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Grant/
Award Numbers: SFRH/BPD/122028/2016,
SFRH/BD/101524/2014; Bial Foundation;
Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N expectations in online-shopping contexts, activate resource-saving

The internet has made interpersonal interactions, services, and informa-
tion highly accessible, convenient, and easy, captivating consumers to
shop online and contributing for the rapid development of e-commerce.
Yet, when consumers move to the easy and convenient online-
shopping environment, do they judge and decide the same way they do
in-store/offline?
The continuous growth of online-shopping and companies' efforts
to implement multichannel strategies has stimulated research aiming
to understand how consumers' online decisions may differ from tradi-
tional offline shopping (e.g., Alba et al., 1997; Silva & Goncalves,
2016; Zhuang et al., 2018). Among other findings, previous research
has emphasized how online-shopping contexts provide and are sought
for its convenience, accessibility, and effortless nature (e.g., Childers
et al., 2001). If consumers associate resource-saving goals to online-
shopping contexts, could such expectations influence their decision
processes? The present research examines whether low-effort
goals, that translate into low-effort, heuristic-based, decision pro-
cesses when compared to offline/in-store contexts.
1.1 | Heuristic versus systematic consumer
decisions
Research in psychology has distinguished between two systems of
thought, each with different capacities and processes (e.g., Chaiken &
Trope, 1999; Evans & Stanovich, 2013). Generally, dual-process
models distinguish between intuitive processes—relying on accessible
and largely automatic heuristics, requiring little information, effort and
time to be computed—and systematic processes—that require cogni-
tive capacity and thus depend on individuals' motivation, ability, and
time to allocate the necessary resources.
This distinction is relevant considering that most judgment situa-
tions are routine, rather than personally involving, and demand that

J Consumer Behav. 2022;21:743–755. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cb © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 743

744
multiple tasks compete for limited processing capacity. As consequence,
consumers will often rely on effortless heuristics to judge and decide.
For example, surface characteristics of products, such as brands
(Maheswaran et al., 1992), country of origin (Insch & McBride, 2004), or
social consensus (Cialdini et al., 1990; Huang & Chen, 2006) can acti-
vate heuristic decision rules to judge the quality or desirability of a con-
sumption option. Systematic processing of information, and reliance on
reflective thinking, requires that consumers have the cognitive capacity,
the time, and the motivation to engage in the effortful processing and
consideration of nonheuristic, but judgment-relevant, information
(e.g., Chaiken, 1980). Decision contexts may thus provide better or
worse opportunities to engage in systematic processing or to rely on
intuitive/heuristic processing (e.g., Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011). The
present work gives a first step aiming to understand whether online-
shopping contexts influence consumers' processing motivation and reli-
ance on these qualitatively different ways of thinking and deciding.
1.2 | Effortless online-shopping
The internet and its interactive nature provide convenience and an
opportunity to save resources. Online-shopping reduces information
search costs and processing efforts, does not impose decision-making
time-constraints, and does not involve traveling, product carrying or
restrictions on shopping hours, when compared with the restrictions
and demands of offline-shopping alternatives (e.g., Alba et al., 1997;
Beldad et al., 2010; Grewal et al., 2004).
For these reasons, previous research has highlighted how
online-shopping consumers are motivated by the prospect of saving
resources in the different stages of the consumer journey. Specifi-
cally, consumers shopping online are often motivated by conve-
nience aspects (e.g., Duarte et al., 2018; Overby & Lee, 2006), the
ease of use (e.g., Bridges & Florsheim, 2008; Goldsmith & Bridges,
2000), or by the opportunity to save time and effort (e.g., Childers
et al., 2001; Chiu et al., 2019; Kumar & Kashyap, 2018; Rohm &
Swaminathan, 2004).
In accordance with such low-effort and resource-saving intentions,
consumers show a preference for online-shopping contexts that provide
experiences of flow, are more fluent and easier to process (Chu et al.,
2010; Dailey, 2004; Goldsmith et al., 2001). Consumers are also less likely
to explore new brands or purchase high importance products in online
contexts than in offline contexts (e.g., Martín et al., 2011; Shen et al.,
2016). Although such tendency may result from lower trust in e-retailers
(e.g., Beldad et al., 2010; Martín et al., 2011), exploring new brands or pur-
chasing high importance products often involves effortful systematic
processing of product information. Consequently, the tendency to pur-
chase familiar brands or low importance products online (when compared
to offline/in store contexts where high involvement purchases are more
likely to take place) may be related with consumers' resource-saving goals
when shopping online, or at least contribute to strengthening the link
between online-shopping and low-effort processes.
It is noteworthy that online-shopping provides the time and
opportunity for consumers to easily gather more product information
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NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
(from detailed product descriptions to experts' and consumers'
reviews) than offline settings (Rose et al., 2011). Indeed, consumers
expect online-shopping contexts to demand less searching efforts
than offline contexts (Chiu et al., 2019). Importantly, however, access
to more information does not necessarily result in more effortful and
systematic processing. For instance, having more information or
knowledge about a product category may in fact reduce processing
motivation and effort when learning about new product information
(Wood & Lynch Jr, 2002). Indeed, when information sets are too large
and/or complex, judgments may benefit from effortless intuitive
processing (e.g., Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). Thus, the easy access to
product information in online-shopping settings may reduce con-
sumers' processing motivation and promote effortless/heuristic-based
decisions.
Different streams of research thus converge with the idea
that saving resources is one of the main goals and an essential fea-
ture of consumer's representation of online shopping. As such, con-
sumers' shopping online should hold resource-saving goals and
expect spending fewer resources than consumers shopping offline.
We thus hypothesize that:
H1. : Consumers expect decisions in online-shopping to
demand fewer resources than offline-shopping.
1.3 | Contextual priming of consumer behavior
Saving resources and engaging in low-effort processes seem to be
important goals of online-shopping. We thus question whether
online-shopping contexts can trigger such goals, and increase con-
sumers' effortless, heuristic-based, decisions, when compared with
offline-shopping contexts.
Previous research on behavioral priming and script activation has
shown that simple exposure to contextual cues activates mindsets,
goals, and behavioral schemes that are strongly associated to such
contexts (e.g., Bargh, 2014). These effects have been shown to impact
behavior in several social domains. For instance, priming words related
to cooperation increased cooperation goals (Bargh et al., 2001), while
priming words related to politeness led participants to wait longer
before interrupting an experimenter (Bargh et al., 1996). Similarly,
priming effects have also been shown to impact consumers' goals and
behaviors (e.g., Aggarwal & McGill, 2012; Chang & Chu, 2020;
Chartrand et al., 2008; Fitzsimons et al., 2008; Mazar & Zhong, 2010).
For example, exposure to Apple logos increased creativity (Fitzsimons
et al., 2008), while exposure to environmentally friendly products acti-
vates social norms, increasing prosocial behaviors (Mazar & Zhong,
2010). Importantly, such priming effects may activate specific con-
sumption goals and associated behaviors. For instance, unrelated
reminders of thriftiness (or prestige) or exposition to the brand name
Walmart (or Nordstrom) can prime economy/thrift goals (or luxury/
prestige) and boost subsequent evaluations of economy-priced
(or luxury-priced) options (Chartrand et al., 2008). Similarly, the mere
exposure to cause-related marketing evokes in consumers a desire to

NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
be prosocial, reducing the likelihood of self-indulgent choices
(Chang & Chu, 2020).
Contextual cues can thus activate associated goals and the
corresponding behaviors directed toward goal achievement. Similarly,
contextualizing a consumer decision as taking place in an online set-
ting may activate associated resource-saving goals and low-effort
expectations. Such goals may then translate into low-effort processing
of product information. Considering that when people are not moti-
vated, or cannot engage in effortful cognitive processes to back up
their judgments and decisions, they rely on salient and intuitive
heuristic-cues, while neglecting other more resource consuming infor-
mation (e.g., Chaiken, 1980) we hypothesize that:
H2. Consumers in online shopping contexts, when com-
pared to offline contexts, are less likely to engage in effort-
ful systematic processing of information and are more
likely to rely on accessible heuristic cues.
1.4 | Studies overview
The present paper argues that consumers associate online-shopping
contexts with low effort and resource-saving goals. For that reason,
we hypothesize that online-shopping contexts may prime resource-
saving goals and associated behaviors. Consequently, we expect
online-shopping contexts to reduce systematic processing and
increase heuristic-based decisions when compared with offline-
shopping contexts. In a series of four studies, we test these assump-
tions. Study 1 tests whether consumers expect to allocate fewer
resources to achieve a satisfying consumer decision in online than
in offline shopping contexts (H1). Studies 2 to 4 test whether con-
sumer judgments and decisions imagined in online-shopping con-
texts rely more heavily on heuristic cues than decisions imagined
taking place in-store (H2). Specifically, Study 2 uses a “base-rate
neglect” problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973) to test whether par-
ticipants in online-shopping contexts are more likely to neglect
base-rate information and rely more on the representativeness heu-
ristic than participants in offline-shopping contexts. Studies 3 and
4 ask participants to decide between pairs of products where one
option is favored by a peripheral heuristic cue, such as brand name,
but has a general lower quality than the alternative in nonheuristic
attributes (Maheswaran et al., 1992). Additionally, Study 4 explores
whether effort expectations associated with each context may
account for differences in consumers' judgments in online and offline
contexts.
2 | STUDY 1
Literature suggests that consumers shopping online are motivated by
resource-saving goals. Study 1 tests whether consumers expect to
spend fewer psychological resources in online-shopping than in in-
store decisions (H1).
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745
2.1 | Method
One-hundred-and-thirty-six university students (age M = 24.4 years
old; 53% female, 47% male) participated in this study in exchange for
course credits. Following a within-subjects design, Study 1 asked par-
ticipants to think about their experience as consumers in the online
and in offline shopping contexts. For each context, we asked partici-
pants to judge how much time, attention, motivation, and effort they
usually need to invest to achieve a good decision (on a scale from
1—no resources at all, to 7—all resources).
2.2 | Results
Study 1 showed that participants expected to allocate significantly
more time (t [135] = 5.91, p < .001), effort (t [135] = 6.11, p < .001),
motivation, (t [135] = 5.62, p < .001), but not more attention (t [135]
< 1) to achieve a good decision when shopping in a physical store than
when shopping online. See Table 1 for means. Consumers thus expect
online shopping to be less demanding than shopping in-store, corrob-
orating H1. Expecting online-shopping to require fewer cognitive and
motivational resources than offline-shopping should reduce con-
sumers' effort to consider nonheuristic information in online contexts.
Studies 2 to 5 thus test H2; whether judgments and decisions in
online shopping contexts are more likely to rely on heuristic cues and
neglect relevant but nonheuristic information when compared to off-
line contexts.
3 | ST UDY 2
Study 2 provides the first test to whether activating the context of
online (vs. offline) shopping increases consumers' reliance on heuristic
cues (H2). We test this hypothesis using an adaptation of the lawyer
and engineer task developed by Kahneman and Tversky (1973) to
illustrate the use of the representativeness heuristic. The representa-
tiveness heuristic posits that probability judgments rely on the similar-
ity between a target, outcome, or event, and the category. In this task,
people rely on the representativeness heuristic when they categorize
a target person described as a stereotypical engineer as more likely to
be an engineer than a lawyer, while neglecting base-rate information
T A B L E 1 Means (SD in parentheses) for effort beliefs (time,
effort, motivation, and attention) in the online and offline shopping
contexts
Online Offline
Effort beliefs M (SD) M (SD)
Time 4.46 (1.47) 5.45 (1.32)
Effort 4.14 (1.53) 5.15 (1.30)
Motivation 4.25 (1.48) 5.13 (1.35)
Attention 4.79 (1.50) 4.90 (1.41)

746
indicating that the target person was drawn from a pool of 100 sub-
jects in which 90 were lawyers and 10 engineers. We adapted this
problem to a consumer-behavior context and test whether imagining
shopping online leads to a stronger reliance on the representativeness
heuristic than imagining shopping in-store.
3.1 | Method
Ninety-six university students (M = 23.09 years old, SD = 3.04;
39.4% female, 45.9% male, 0.9% transgender, 1.8% rather not disclose
their gender) participated in this study in exchange for course credits.
In a between-subjects design, participants were randomly
assigned to the online-shopping or to the offline-shopping condi-
tion. In each condition, participants were asked to imagine they
were shopping in an online/offline store. They were presented
images showing consumers in online/offline shopping contexts
(Appendix A in Data S1) and asked to think about their last shop-
ping experience in the assigned context. Additionally, participants
were asked to rate their satisfaction and how difficult it was to
choose that product on 7-point scales from 1—not at all to 7—
extremely. These instructions, and the associated images, were
designed to create immersion and activate the mindset/goals asso-
ciated with the assigned context.
Afterward, participants were presented with two base-rate prob-
lems structurally similar to the “lawyer-and-engineer” problem
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). In one problem, participants were told
to imagine they were awarded a headphone-set described with high-
quality features (see Appendix B in Data S1). They were told the head-
phones were randomly drawn from a pool of 1000 headphones where
95% were branded Decathlon (sports-brand unrelated to technology,
low representativeness) and 5% were branded Sony (brand highly rep-
resentative of high-quality audio–visual technology). They were then
asked to judge whether the headphones were more likely to be Sony
or Decathlon on a scale from 1 (definitely Sony) to 8 (definitely
Decathlon). The second problem asked whether a high-quality wine
was developed by a French producer (high representativeness) or by a
Chinese producer (low representativeness), given that the wine was
sampled from a set of 1000 wines containing 95% Chinese wines and
5% French wines. Participants then rated the likelihood of the wine to
be French or Chinese on an 8 point-scale from 1 (definitely French) to
8 (definitely Chinese). Note that we reverse coded responses to the
categorical judgment so that higher values on the dependent variable
would represent more heuristic responses across all studies of the
present manuscript.
3.2 | Results
3.2.1 | Control measures
The context priming task also asked participants to think about their
last purchase in the assigned context and to rate their satisfaction and
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NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
how difficult was the purchasing decision. No differences between
the online and offline conditions were found in participants' satisfac-
tion with their last purchase (Monline = 5.23, SDonline = 1.39; Moffline =
1.39, SDoffline = 1.20; t [94] = 0.31, p = .754), however, participants
in the online-shopping condition found their purchasing decision mar-
ginally easier than those in the offline condition (Monline = 2.98,
SDonline = 1.83; Moffline = 3.60, SDoffline = 1.81; t [94] = 1.69, p = .095,
95% CI [ 0.11, 1.36]).
3.2.2 | Categorization task
Regarding the categorization task, participants in the online condition
rated the headphone set and the wine as more likely to be members
of the representative categories, Sony (Monline = 6.81, SDonline = 1.73;
Moffline = 5.58, SDoffline = 2.53; t[94] = 2.78, p = .007) and French
(Monline = 5.88, SDonline = 2.05;Moffline = 5.54, SDoffline = 2.10, t[94] =
0.80, p = .424), respectively. When aggregating responses to both
problems in terms of representativeness versus base-rate options, an
independent sample t test showed that participants in the online-
shopping condition rated products as significantly more likely to be
members of the most representative category than participants in the
offline condition (Monline = 6.34, SDonline = 1.69; Moffline = 5.56,
SDoffline = 1.81; t [94] = 2.19, p = .031, 95% CI [ 1.49, 0.07]).
3.2.3 | Discussion
These findings support our hypothesis that online-shopping contexts
prime low-effort processes and favor intuitive/heuristic-based deci-
sions (H2). Participants were less likely to judge products as members
of the higher base-rate category, suggesting this relevant probabilistic
information is more likely to be neglected in judgments occurring in
online-shopping contexts. The present categorization task illustrates
the representativeness heuristic and is relevant to understand general
decision processes, yet other heuristic cues have been shown to be
particularly important for consumers' decisions. Study 3 thus explores
whether reliance on heuristic cues used to guide consumer behavior,
like “brand” or “consensus,” are more likely to guide decisions in
online than in offline contexts.
4 | ST UDY 3
In study 3, we continue testing whether online-shopping contexts
are more likely to lead to heuristic-based judgments than offline-
shopping contexts in a consumer decision task (H2). Specifically,
study 3 tests whether products endorsed by heuristic cues, such as
brand, consensus or country-of-origin, but described as having lower
quality than an alternative option, are more likely to be selected
by consumers shopping online than shopping in-store. Because
online-shopping contexts are associated with resource-saving goals,
participants are expected to be less likely to consider nonheuristic

NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
information and decide based on available heuristic cues in online
than in offline shopping contexts.
Importantly, the present studies take place in an online setting;
where it is likely easier to imagine being in an online-shopping context
than in an offline context. Processing fluency promotes heuristic-
based decisions (e.g., Alter et al., 2007), therefore, the potentially
higher fluency of the online-shopping condition could explain why
participants are more likely to give heuristic responses in that condi-
tion. Study 3 thus controls for this alternative account based on
processing fluency (the ease with which participants imagined the
scenarios).
4.1 | Method
One-hundred-and-seventy-nine participants (M = 27 years old; 69%
female, 31% male; Italian nationality) voluntarily participated in this
online study. The study was posted and shared on social media
platforms.
Similar to study 2, in a between-subjects design, participants were
asked to imagine they were shopping online or in-store, and to think
about their last experience in the assigned context. To increase
immersion in the assigned context they were asked to rate how happy
and satisfied they were with their last purchase in the assigned shop-
ping context using 5-point rating scales. Participants were then pres-
ented five pairs of products of different categories (Laptop, raincoat,
cake, coffee machine, and eyeglasses). Products in each pair had simi-
lar designs and the same price. Each pair included a heuristic-option—
a product favored by a heuristic attribute like brand (Maheswaran
et al., 1992), country-of-origin (Insch & McBride, 2004), or consensus
(Cialdini et al., 1990), but showing low-quality features; and a
systematic-option—a product featuring high-quality attributes such as
the great taste of a cake or the large processing-capacity of a laptop,
but lower value on the heuristic-attribute1 (Appendix C, in Data S1).
For each pair, participants were asked to choose which product they
would buy, and to indicate the likelihood of purchasing each option
(from 0% to 100%).
Finally, familiarity with the shopping context (“how familiar are
you with shopping in online/physical stores?”) was measured on a 0%
to 100% scale, while ease-of-imagining (“how easy was it to imagine
you were shopping in an online/physical store?”) was measured on a
5-point rating scale.
1
We tested the effectiveness of the high (and low) quality descriptions by presenting a group
of 100 university students (Mage = 23.21, SDage = 1.80, 50% males, 50% females) the same
pairs of products and corresponding descriptions used in study 3 but without the critical
heuristic-cues. Participants were then asked to select the higher-quality option on a 7-point
rating scale from 1 “definitely option A” to 7 “definitely option B.” We reverse-coded some
pairs of products so higher values would correspond to a preference for the “higher-quality”
option and compared participants' ratings with the mid-point of the scale. For all products
participants rated the “higher-quality” option as having significantly higher quality than the
“lower-quality option” (Laptop: M = 6.48, SE = .10, t[99] = 23.64, p < .001, 95% CI [2.27,
2.69]; Raincoat: M = 4.98, SE = .18, t[99] = 5.47, p < .001, 95% CI [0.62, 1.34]; Cake: M =
4.53, SE = .21, t(99) = 2.57, p = .012, 95% CI [0.12, 0.94]; Coffee Machine: M = 4.66, SE =
.22, t(99) = 2.98, p = .004, 95% CI [0.22, 1.10]; Seeing Glasses: M = 4.53, SE = .21, t[99]
= 7.29, p < .001, 95% CI [0.99, 1.73]).
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747
4.2 | Results
4.2.1 | Control measures
In the context priming task, no differences were found between the
online and offline conditions regarding judged happiness (t[177] =
0.58, p = .561, 95% CI [ 0.31, 0.17]) and satisfaction (t[177] =
0.80, p = .43, 95% CI [ 0.34, 0.14]) with the last purchase. Results
indicated higher familiarity with the offline-context (Moffline = 84.58,
SDoffline = 17.20) than with the online-context (Monline = 57.19,
SDonline = 29.22, t[177] = 7.67, p < .001, 95% CI [20.29, 34.50]) but
no differences on the ease with which participants imagined the sce-
narios (Monline = 3.71, SDonline = 1.03, Moffline = 3.57, SDoffline =
0.87, t[177] = 1.03, p = .306, 95% CI [ 0.14, 0.43]).
4.2.2 | Choices and preferences
We calculated the proportion of “heuristic choices” across the differ-
ent pairs of products. As predicted, participants in the online context
were more likely to choose the heuristic-option (Monline = .58, SDonline
= 0.23) than participants in the offline condition (Moffline = .44,
SDoffline = 0.25, t[177] = 3.737, p < .001; 95% CI [0.064, 0.206]), even
when controlling for context familiarity (F[1, 178] = 9.81, p = .002,
η2partial = .053) (Figure 1). This pattern of results holds for all product
categories (Table 2).
We also averaged participants' purchase likelihood ratings across
product-pairs and found that participants were more likely to pur-
chase the systematic-option in the offline context (Monline = 47.24,
SDonline = 16.01; Moffline = 56.67, SDoffline = 16.00, t[177] = 3.86,
p < .001; 95% CI [4.60, 14.26]); but were more likely to purchase the
heuristic-option in the online condition (Monline = 53.79, SDonline =
16.00; Moffline = 47.26, SDoffline = 17.15, t[177] = 2.63, p = .009,
95% CI [1.64, 11.42]). Again, the same pattern is observed for each
product-category (Table 2). Nonetheless, while contextual differences
for most heuristic-options do not reach significant levels, for most
systematic-options, purchase likelihood ratings are significantly higher
for the offline than for the online condition. This suggests that
Proportion of choices of the heuristic option
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Online context Offline context
F I G U R E 1 Proportion of choices of the heuristic option for the
online and offline shopping contexts
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748 NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO

T A B L E 2 Percentage of choices of the heuristic-option and mean purchase likelihood for the heuristic option and for the systematic option
(SE in parentheses) as a function of the shopping context for the products used in Study 3

Percentage of heuristic choice Purchase likelihood

Heuristic option Systematic option

Product (heuristic attribute) Online Offline p Online Offline p Online Offline p

Laptop (brand) 0.50 0.35 .054 50.14 (3.32) 41.05 (3.42) .058 52.57 (3.57) 60.93 (3.22) .084
Raincoat (brand) 0.80 0.66 .031 65.87 (2.78) 59.81 (2.80) .126 35.56 (2.75) 47.30 (3.00) .004
Cake (consensus) 0.48 0.34 .053 48.16 (3.38) 42.85 (3.14) .252 52.68 (3.22) 58.03 (3.18) .239
Coffee machine (country-of-origin) 0.42 0.23 .007 44.13 (2.95) 34.58 (2.88) .022 57.30 (2.95) 68.85 (2.82) .005
Glasses (country-of-origin) 0.69 0.64 .428 60.64 (2.93) 58.03 (2.73) .517 38.07 (2.90) 48.22 (3.02) .016

online-shopping contexts may reduce participants' effortful system-
atic processing, but not the automatic processing of heuristic
attributes.
4.2.3 | Discussion
Results from Study 3 indicate that online-shopping decisions rely
more on available heuristic cues than offline-shopping decisions. The
effect occurs for different heuristic cues supporting the argument that
online-shopping contexts may prime resource-saving goals that affect
general decision processes rather than reliance on a specific heuristic.
Nonetheless, exploring different heuristic cues in the same task may
confound different underlying processes as different heuristic cues
may have higher or lower accessibility and ecological validity in the
different shopping contexts (e.g., Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011).
Moreover, materials of Study 3 consist of products of different cate-
gories, which may elicit different levels of involvement and trigger dif-
ferent decisions strategies (e.g., Batra & Sinha, 2000). For these
reasons, Study 4 will consider only one heuristic cue, products' brand,
which is likely the most accessible heuristic cue in both online and off-
line contexts; and focus on a single product category.
5 | STUDY 4
Further testing H2, Study 4 replicates Study 3 while increasing the
experimental control by studying only one heuristic cue, the brand
heuristic, and one product category, sportswear. Both online and off-
line stores often provide information regarding sportswear perfor-
mance, making this product category adequate for the test of the
present hypothesis. Additionally, Study 4 tests whether the difference
between consumers' judgments in online and offline contexts is driven
by consumers' belief that online-shopping contexts demand less effort
than offline contexts.
Study 4 further includes a decision condition where the heuristic-
option is also the higher quality option (congruent condition). This
condition avoids participants' inferences that the different pairs of
products will always pair a low-quality branded product with a high-
quality “unbranded” alternative. Additionally, “congruent” pairs allow
to control whether the heuristic-cue is interpreted differently in the
two shopping contexts. Specifically, if “brand” is an equally positive
feature in the online and offline contexts, we should not observe con-
textual effects for “congruent” pairs. Therefore, preferences for the
branded option should depend on the shopping context only when
the heuristic cue is incongruent with the other, cognitively demanding,
attributes.
5.1 | Method
Three-hundred and sixty-eight participants recruited from Amazon
Mechanical-Turk (Mean age = 32, 63% female, 37% male; 99% USA
nationals) participated in this study.2
Using the same procedure of Studies 2 and 3, participants were
assigned to the online or offline shopping context and asked to ima-
gine they were shopping for sporting clothes. After the shopping
context priming, participants were asked to consider six pairs of
sports-clothing products presented with the same price and similar
visual features. To manipulate the heuristic-feature “brand,” for each
pair of products, one option was “branded” (using three of the most
valuable and popular sport brands: Nike, Adidas, and Reebok,) and the
other was “unbranded” (using low-familiarity labels: Yozai, Vathos,
and Wado). Additionally, each option had nonheuristic information
regarding product's quality, performance, and sustainability (system-
atic-processing features) (Appendix D in Data S1). In half of the pairs,
the branded product was outperformed by the unbranded product in
the systematic features (incongruent pairs). On the other half, the
unbranded product was outperformed by the branded option (congru-
ent pairs).
For each pair of products, participants were asked to choose
which option to buy; and to judge their attitude toward each option
on a three-item (“How much would you like to have this product?”;
2
Based on the effect size of Study 3 (η2partial = .053) the minimum required sample size for
the between subjects' effect of a 2  2 ANOVA with repeated measures, power = 0.95, and
α = .05, was N = 246. Based on a small effect size (η2partial = .011), the minimum required
sample size for the between-within interaction effect, power = 0.95 and α = .05, was N
= 296.

NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
“How satisfied would you be if you had this product?”; “How much
do you like this product?”), 7-points rating scale (1—not at all to 7—
totally). Pairs of products were presented in a random order.
Similar to Study 1, participants rated how much motivation, time,
effort, and attention they need to invest to achieve a good decision in
the assigned shopping (1—no resources at all to 7—all resources).
Additionally, ease-of-imagining and familiarity with both shopping
contexts were measured in 7-point rating-scales. Finally, involvement
with the product category was measured in a four-item agreement
scale (1—totally disagree to 7—totally agree)” (see Appendix E).
The design was a 2 shopping context  2 attributes' congruency,
between-subjects design with repeated measures on the last factor.
5.2 | Results
5.2.1 | Control measures
In the context priming task, no differences between the online
and offline conditions were found for how difficult (M online =
2.93, SD online = 1.67; M offline = 2.87, SD offline = 1.61; t[364] =
0.35, p = .726) and satisfying (M online = 5.91, SD online = 0.94;
M offline = 5.83, SD offline = 1.08; t[364] = 0.78, p = .437) were
participant's last purchase in the assigned context. No differ-
ences were found regarding how difficult it was to imagine pur-
chasing in the online or offline context (M online = 2.16, SD online =
1.49; M offline = 2.20, SD offline = 1.47; t[361] = 0.255, p = .799).
Participants in both conditions were equally familiarized with the
online and the offline shopping contexts (M online = 6.49, SD =
0.96; M offline = 6.63, SD = 0.86; t[361] = 1.56, p = .121); F
(1, 364) = 0.72, p = .397, η 2
partial = .002; (famoff = M online =
6.48, SD online = 0.96; M offline = 6.54, SD offline = 0.81, t[361] =
0.62, p = .533). The involvement with the product category of
sporting clothes (α = .96) did not differ across context conditions
as well (M online = 3.93, SD online = 1.69; M offline = 4.07, SD offline =
1.68; t [360] = 0.79, p = .431).
Importantly, participants expected to allocate significantly more
time (t[363] = 4.600, p < .001), effort (t[360] = 5.04, p < .001) moti-
vation (t[363] = 3.96, p < .001), but not significantly more attention
(t[360] = 1.05, p = .294), to achieve a good decision in the offline
context than in the online context. See Table 3 for means and stan-
dard deviations.
T A B L E 3 Means (SD in parentheses) for effort beliefs (time,
effort, motivation, and attention) in the online and offline shopping
contexts
Online Offline
Effort beliefs M (SD) M (SD)
Time 4.69 (1.42) 5.30 (1.10)
Effort 4.42 (1.52) 5.17 (1.28)
Motivation 4.35 (1.49) 4.96 (1.47)
Attention 5.19 (1.40) 5.33 (1.25)
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749
5.2.2 | Choice and attitudes
An ANOVA 2 context  2 congruency with repeated measures on the
last factor on participant's proportion of choices of the branded prod-
uct revealed a main effect of congruency, indicating sensitiveness to
systematic-features. Participants were more likely to choose the
branded product in the congruent condition (M = 0.87, SD = 0.39; SE
= 0.011) than in the incongruent condition (M = 0.45, SD = 0.39; SE
= 0.011, F[1, 364] = 337.58, p < .001, η2partial = .481). An interaction
between purchasing context and congruency (F(1, 364) = 4.28, p =
.039, η2partial = .012) showed that for incongruent pairs participants
are more likely to choose the branded (heuristic) product in the online
than in the offline condition (Monline = 0.49, SDonline = 0.39, SE =
0.029; Moffline = 0.41, SDoffline = 0.39, SE = 0.029; t[364] = 1.98, p =
.048, 95% CI [0.00, 0.16], η2partial = .011). Yet, for congruent pairs,
shopping-context does not impact choices (Monline = 0.87, SDonline =
0.23, SE = 0.016; Moffline = 0.88, SDoffline = 0.21, SE = 0.016; t [364]
= 0.64, p = .523, 95% CI [ 0.059, 0.030]) (see Figure 2). No main
effect of context was found F(1, 364) = 1.97, p = .162, η2partial
= .005.
For congruent pairs an ANOVA 2 (context)  2 (product brand)
with repeated measures on the last factor revealed more positive atti-
tudes toward the branded, and higher quality, product (M = 5.17, SD
= 1.26) than toward the unbranded, and lower quality, product (M =
3.82, SD = 1.35, F (1, 364) = 375.95, p < .001, η2partial = .508). No
other effects were found.
For the incongruent pairs, an ANOVA 2 (context)  2 (product
brand) with repeated measures on the last factor did not reveal signifi-
cant effects, including the hypothesized interaction between context
and brand F(1, 364) = 2.60, p = .108, η2partial = .007. Nonetheless,
planned-contrasts showed, that attitudes toward the unbranded prod-
uct (systematic-option) were more positive for the offline (M = 4.81,
SD = 1.39) than for the online condition (M = 4.48, SD = 1.41, t[364]
= 2.20, p = .028), while no differences were found for the branded
Proportion of choices of the branded
option
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Congruent Pairs Incongruent pairs
Online context Offline context
F I G U R E 2 Proportion of choice of branded options for congruent
and incongruent pairs as a function of the shopping context

750
Attitudes towards consumption
options for Incongruent Pairs
7
3 F I G U R E 4 Standardized regression coefficients for the
1 allocation. Regression coefficient between shopping context and
Heuristic Option Systematic Option
(Branded option)
Online context Offline context
F I G U R E 3 Attitudes toward “heuristic” (branded product) and
“systematic” consumption options in incongruent pairs for the online
and offline shopping contexts
product (heuristic-option) (Monline = 4.63, SDonline = 1.24; Moffline =
4.70, SDoffline = 1.26, t[364] = 0.52 < 1, p = .607) (see Figure 3).
These results show that heuristic cues are processed in both contexts,
but that additional nonheuristic/systematic information is more likely
to be considered in offline than in online shopping contexts,
suggesting that online-shopping reduced systematic processing of
product features.
Because systematic processing is an effortful process requiring
time, motivation, and attention, we explored whether expected
resource allocation (as a composite of expected allocation of time,
motivation, attention, and effort, α = .83), would mediate differences
between online and offline shopping contexts in participants' attitudes
and choices.
We tested whether participants' expected resource allocation
mediates the effect of shopping context on the choice of heuristic
options and although in the predicted direction, bootstrapping analy-
sis with 10,000 resamples and 95% bias-corrected using Hayes' PRO-
CESS model 4 (Hayes, 2013) revealed a nonsignificant indirect effect
(β = .010, CI [ 0.033, 0.009]).
We further explored whether expected resource allocation medi-
ates the effect of shopping context on the attitudes toward higher-
quality options. Note that the consideration of heuristic attributes
does not depend on processing effort and resource allocation, while
attitudes toward higher-quality options require the effortful system-
atic processing of nonheuristic attributes. Consequently, attitudes
toward higher-quality options3 provide a better dependent variable to
the test of our hypothesis than attitudes toward branded options.
3
Note that in this analysis, we are considering attitudes towards higher-quality options of
both congruent and incongruent pairs, because the ability to compute value from
nonheuristic features is assumed to depend on effortful systematic processing in both
conditions. That is, expecting to allocate more resources to the decision should enable the
computation of nonheuristic/systematic features and lead to more positive attitudes towards
higher quality options regardless of whether these options are congruent with the heuristic
attribute.
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NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
relationship between shopping context and attitudes toward the
higher-quality/systematic option as mediated by expected resource
attitudes controlling for expected resource allocation in parenthesis.
* p < .05; ** p < .01
Bootstrapping analysis with 10,000 resamples and 95% bias-
corrected using Hayes' PROCESS model 4 (Hayes, 2013) revealed
a significant indirect effect (β = .0378, CI [ 0.074, 0.013])
indicating that expected resource allocation mediates the shopping-
context effect on the attitudes toward the higher-quality or “system-
atic” product. Specifically, in online-shopping contexts participants
expect to allocate fewer resources to their decisions than in offline
contexts, which in turn results in less positive attitudes toward the
higher-quality products in online than in offline contexts (Figure 4).
5.2.3 | Discussion
Study 4 shows a stronger tendency to rely on the brand heuristic in
online than in offline shopping contexts, at least for low-involvement
products like sporting clothes. Attitudes toward the heuristic and sys-
tematic options further suggest this effect results from the neglect of
nonheuristic/systematic information in online contexts, and not from
differences in the processing of heuristic cues. Study 4 thus supports
our hypothesis (H2) that consumers in online-shopping contexts are
less likely to engage in effortful systematic-processing and will more
likely base their preferences on superficial heuristic cues. Finally, an
exploratory mediation analysis further suggests that expecting online-
shopping to demand fewer resources to achieve a good decision,
mediates the effect of the shopping context on the attitudes toward
the higher-quality/systematic consumption options. Together these
findings support the idea that online-shopping contexts possibly prime
resource-saving processes thus reducing systematic-processing while
increasing heuristic decisions.
6 | GENERAL DISCUSSION
The present research gives a first step to understand whether the
online shopping context impacts consumer's reliance on more intui-
tive/heuristic-based decision processes. We showed that consumers
expect to allocate fewer resources to online-shopping decisions than

NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
to in-store decisions (Studies 1 and 4). Such low-effort expectation of
online-shopping contexts possibly prime resource-saving goals and
corresponding behaviors, making consumers more likely to rely on
effortless heuristics, such as brand, consensus, or country-of-origin,
when judging consumption options (Studies 3 and 4), or on the repre-
sentativeness heuristic when judging probabilities (Study 2). Con-
sumers' resource-allocation expectations in the online and offline
shopping contexts were also found to mediate the more positive atti-
tudes toward higher-quality consumption-options in online contexts,
even though we did not found the same mediation for product
choices (Study 4). The present findings thus contribute to better
understand how the online-shopping context may impact consumer
decision processes and highlights how reliance on more intuitive or
systematic processes depends on the shopping context where con-
sumer judgments and decisions take place.
6.1 | Theoretical implications
Our findings bring contributions to the online consumer behavior lit-
erature and to the judgment and decision-making literature by
highlighting how different contexts or decision environments may
facilitate reliance on more heuristic or more systematic decision
processes.
6.2 | Online shopping and consumer decision-
making
The growing importance of online shopping for consumer behavior
has led researchers to explore how online contexts may impact con-
sumer judgments and decisions. Previous research has mostly focused
on how online and in-store contexts differ in the quality and quantity
of the available information (e.g., Alba et al., 1997; Chu et al., 2010), in
consumers' perceptions and expectations about the retailers
(e.g., Silva & Goncalves, 2016; Zhuang et al., 2018) or in consumers'
motivations to shop online (e.g., Shen et al., 2016). The present work
contributes to the literature about online consumer-behavior by
exploring whether online shopping contexts impact reliance on more
intuitive or systematic decision strategies. Following up on previous
research suggesting that online-shopping decisions are often driven
by convenience and the opportunity to save resources (e.g., Childers
et al., 2001) we show that consumers not only expect online shopping
decisions to require fewer resources than offline shopping but also
that they engage in less effortful decision processes in online shop-
ping contexts, which results in different judgments and preferences.
Specifically, we show that consumers in online contexts are less likely
to engage in systematic processing of product information and are
more likely to rely on available heuristic cues in their judgments than
consumers shopping in-store.
We argued that because consumers shopping online are moti-
vated by resource-saving goals, online-shopping contexts can prime
resource-saving goals and associated behaviors. According to our
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751
argument we found that consumers expect to allocate fewer
resources to online than to offline shopping decisions. Consistent with
resource-saving goals, participants in online-shopping conditions
showed a stronger preference for heuristic-options and were less
likely to consider nonheuristic product attributes in their judgments.
Moreover, we found that low-effort expectations mediate the online/
offline differences in attitudes toward higher-quality/systematic
options, which is also consistent with the contextual activation of
resource-saving goals. Additionally, we ruled out alternative accounts
based on processing fluency or familiarity with the shopping context.
Importantly, however, it is unclear whether the present findings result
from effective goal activation (e.g., Chartrand et al., 2008) or from
mere associative processes underlying behavioral priming (Bargh
et al., 1996). That is, reliance on low-effort heuristic processes in
online shopping contexts may result from the activation of resource-
saving goals associated with online-shopping but could also result
from direct activation of low-effort behaviors that are more strongly
associated with online than to offline shopping contexts. The
observed expectations about resource allocation for each context
may suggest that online-shopping contexts activate resource saving
goals. However, such expectations are not inconsistent with a mere
association between online-shopping and low-effort decision pro-
cesses. Future research could thus clarify whether online-shopping
contexts prime resource saving goals or whether it directly primes
low-effort/heuristic responses.
Finally, our argument that online shopping reduces effortful pro-
cesses may seem incongruent with research suggesting that information
search intentions are higher in online-shopping contexts (e.g., Chiu et al.,
2019). It is thus important to note that information search in online and
offline contexts underly different processes, procedures, costs, and even
leads to different informational outcomes. Our studies compared how
the exact same product-information is differently processed online and
offline. Thus, searching motivation is expected to be higher online, prob-
ably because consumers are judging qualitatively different processes.
This may then compromise conclusions about consumers' processing
efforts derived from the direct comparison between information search
intentions in the two contexts. Moreover, even if online consumers feel
they need more information than in-store consumers, having access to
more information will not necessarily result in its effortful/systematic
processing (e.g., Dijksterhuis et al., 2006).
6.3 | Heuristic and systematic processing or
contextual preferences?
Research in psychology has placed great emphasis on the role intuition
plays in people's and consumers' everyday decisions and beliefs
(e.g., Gigerenzer, 2007; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002). Much of the
research on intuition has focused on discussing whether intuitive/
heuristic decisions are superior to those arrived through systematic
deliberate thought (e.g., Dijksterhuis et al., 2006) or whether these intui-
tions can lead to biased judgments (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).
Although it is certainly important to understand the circumstances

752
under which intuition leads to better or worse decisions, it is also
important to understand when and how people are more likely to
decide rationally or intuitively. The current research advances such an
understanding. We show that the context where consumers judge and
decide may facilitate reliance on more intuitive or deliberate decision
processes. We further suggest that different resource allocation
expectations underly the observed tendency to rely more on intuitive
heuristic processes in online shopping contexts than in offline con-
texts. These findings are consistent with previous research suggesting
that people expect some tasks and contexts to be more suitable for
intuitive or systematic decision strategies and decide accordingly
(e.g., Inbar et al., 2010). It is, thus, possible that consumers hold differ-
ent beliefs regarding how suitable intuitive and rational decision pro-
cesses are to judge and decide in online and offline shopping contexts.
The concerns with whether intuition and heuristic-based deci-
sions result in sound or biased outcomes that dominate research
about intuition and heuristic decision processes, often foster discus-
sions about the operationalization of the heuristic responses them-
selves (e.g., Gigerenzer, 2007; Gilovich et al., 2002). In the present
research, we argue that preferences for branded but lower-quality
products are driven by heuristic processing of product features where
product-brand would heuristically signal preference/quality. Impor-
tantly, we do not imply that heuristic-cues, like brand or consensus,
have low ecological validity and will necessarily bias decisions. Our
point is that nonheuristic product-information is more likely neglected
in online-shopping contexts because consumers are less likely to exert
the necessary cognitive effort to compute such information.
Critical to our argument, we found that attitudes toward heuristic-
options were unaffected by the shopping context but attitudes toward
systematic-options were more positive for offline-shopping conditions.
Therefore, while heuristic attributes are processed the same way online
and offline; nonheuristic, and cognitively demanding, features are
more likely considered in offline-shopping contexts. This suggests the
increased preference for heuristic-options online, results from lowered
systematic-processing and rules out alternative interpretations that heu-
ristics could have different weights/interpretations online (for instance,
low sensorial information of online-shopping could increase heuristics'
informativeness; or consumers could deliberately prefer branded options
for group-identification or conspicuous reasons).
Finally, the different heuristic-cues explored in the present work
(representativeness, brand, consensus, or country-of-origin) are proto-
type/abstract heuristics (e.g., Braga et al., 2015), where a target attri-
bute (e.g., product quality) is substituted by an abstract representation
or prototype (e.g., brand). Although the same contextual effect is
expected for heuristic-cues relying on different cognitive processes
(e.g., availability heuristics) future research should explore these quali-
tatively different heuristics.
6.4 | Limitations and future research
The present studies asked participants to consider mostly low-
involvement products (e.g., sporting clothes). However, this may limit
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NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
our conclusions about high-involvement products, where resource
allocation and effortful systematic-processing is more likely. Indeed,
recent research from Chiu et al. (2019) suggests that when consumers
consider arguably high-involvement products (e.g., laptops), low-effort
expectations on products' information-search translate into higher
search motivation. As discussed above, searching information online
and offline involve qualitatively different processes, nonetheless the
finding of Chiu et al. (2019) is suggestive that for high-involvement
products, online-shopping contexts may fail to reduce systematic-
processing of product information. It is thus important to explore
under what conditions high-involvement products would moderate
the online-shopping tendency to reduce processing-effort and foster
heuristic responses. Interestingly, high/low-involvement consumption
goals are often set before choosing the shopping channel, therefore,
when a high-involvement consumption goal is set first, the resource-
saving goals primed by the online-shopping may conflict with the focal
goal and fail to influence behavior. Exploring this potential order-
effect would provide an important addition to the present findings
that focus on scenarios where the shopping context is predefined,
such as during the COVID-19 lockdowns that pushed consumers to
shop online.
It is also important to notice that despite our goal of understand-
ing behavior in online/offline shopping contexts, our studies use sim-
ple contextual cues to prime the psychological processes associate to
each context. Therefore, to create a more immersive scenario, the
context manipulation asked participants to recall their last purchase in
the assigned context. This procedure may, however, limit our findings
to a memory effect which may hinder the internal validity of our
conclusions. We also note that in the present studies there were no
measures that could provide a clear manipulation-check of the effec-
tiveness of the context manipulation. Consequently, and even though
most questions make clear reference to the shopping context, we
cannot assure that all participants were imagining themselves in the
assigned context. Finally, we also note that in Studies 3 and 4,
although the order of presentation of the different pairs was random-
ized, in each pair of products, the heuristic-attribute was always pres-
ented as the right-side option, creating a potential confound. This
issue was, at least partially, overcome in Study 4 where the heuristic
attribute was paired with higher-quality features in half of the trials.
Moreover, we cannot think of a plausible reason why the online/
offline context would interact with a response bias resulting from this
issue, and account for the present findings. Future research should
thus take these limitations in consideration.
It is noteworthy that despite the suggestive data reported in this
manuscript, the mechanism through which online shopping contexts
seem to reduce systematic processing is still unclear. We speculate
and present some data supporting the idea that consumers expect to
allocate fewer resources to their online decisions, which in turn
reduce processing effort and increase preference for heuristic options.
Indeed, we found that shopping contexts impact attitudes toward
higher-quality options, which depend on the ability to compute non-
heuristic attributes, through consumers' expected resource allocation.
However, expected resource allocation did not mediate the effect of

NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO
shopping context on preferences for heuristic options. A potential
explanation for why choices of branded options were not significantly
mediated by expected resource allocation is that this measure may
confound systematic processing and heuristic processing of branded
information (note that, as argued before, some brands may represent
positive product attributes regardless of its heuristic value). For that
reason, attitudes toward higher-quality options, that depend on the
ability to compute nonheuristic information, may provide better evi-
dence of systematic and heuristic processing of product information.
Another potential problem is that the composite measure of
“expected resource allocation” gives equal weights to different psy-
chological resource (time, attention, motivation, effort). However,
some resources are likely more important in determining systematic
processing than others (e.g., Evans & Stanovich, 2013). Finally, we also
argue that resource allocation expectations are associated to resource
saving goals that reduce consumers' processing effort online. How-
ever, we do not provide any direct test to this potential mechanism,
and it is possible that the observed effect may represent some form
of behavioral priming. Future research should thus clarify the mecha-
nism through which online shopping contexts reduce systematic
processing and promote heuristic-based decisions.
6.5 | Managerial implications
Our work highlights the impact of online-shopping's resource-saving
expectations on consumers' processing of heuristic and nonheuristic
information which has important and challenging implications for
managers, marketers, or web-developers. It is crucial to acknowledge
that consumers shopping online are particularly motivated by the
opportunity to save resources and will use decision strategies in
accordance with such goals. This means online-shopping consumers
are likely to overweight heuristic cues while neglecting relevant but
difficult to compute information. We thus suggest that marketing
strategies for online-shopping should not neglect the impact of super-
ficial heuristic cues on the assumption that online contexts offer more
information and enable its careful consideration. Heuristic cues, like
brand labels, price, country-of-origin, or consensus should be carefully
managed and emphasized, because these cues will be particularly
important in determining online product preferences. Specific implica-
tions can extend to product reviews which are particularly present in
online-shopping. Managers should consider that although online con-
sumers look for product reviews, resource-saving expectations may
reduce processing-effort and increase the weight of superficial cues
like scores/ratings, consensus (e.g., average ratings), perceived exper-
tise or number of arguments.
Our findings also emphasize the potentially ironic effects of increas-
ing convenience and ease-of-processing of online-shopping experiences
as a mean to help consumers optimize their decisions. A potential by-
product of facilitating online-shopping is that resource-saving goals
may become more strongly associated with that channel. According to
our findings, this may reduce systematic-processing of product informa-
tion, increase heuristic-based decisions, and potentially hurt decisions'
quality. To tackle this problem, online-shopping may be designed to
14791838, 2022, 4, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cb.2032 by Indian Institute Of Management Lucknow, Wiley Online Library on [22/11/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
753
increase consumers' involvement in their decisions by creating more dis-
fluent environments, removing heuristic-cues, empowering consumer
decisions about the quality and quantity of information they will access,
or highlighting how decision-accuracy concerns may be met online.
7 | CONC LU SION
The present research adds to the current body of knowledge by
suggesting that online shopping contexts may activate resource-
saving goals and increase heuristic decisions. This research thus con-
tributes to fill a gap in the literature exploring differences in online
and offline consumer behavior by bringing new insights on the pro-
cesses underlying how the online context may impact consumer (intu-
itive/systematic) decision processes. We argued that consumers
shopping in online-stores are often motivated by resource-saving
goals and thus showed that consumers expect online-shopping to
demand fewer resources than in-store shopping (H1). Consequently,
we also showed that online-shopping contexts seem to activate
resource-saving expectations, thus reducing processing effort and
increasing consumer decisions based on accessible heuristic cues (H2).
The high accessibility and convenience of the online-shopping
contexts may thus reduce processing efforts and increase intuitive,
heuristic-based, judgments, that may potentially hurt consumers' deci-
sions and open the discussion among practitioners and academics on
how to effectively help consumers to achieve better decisions in
online-shopping environments.
ACKNOWLEDG MENTS
This research was supported by grants from the Portuguese Founda-
tion for Science and Technology (SFRH/BPD/122028/2016) to the
first author; and by grants from the Portuguese Foundation for Sci-
ence and Technology (SFRH/BD/101524/2014) and Bial Foundation
(85/14), to the second author. The authors thank Margherita Grifa for
developing the materials and collecting the data for study 3.
CONFLIC T OF INT ER E ST
The authors declare that there is no conflict.
DATA AVAILABILITY STAT EMEN T
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the
corresponding author upon reasonable request.
OR CID
~ Niza Braga
Joao https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8195-4428
Sofia Jacinto https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4883-2351
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NIZA BRAGA AND JACINTO 755

Zhuang, H., Leszczyc, P. T. P., & Lin, Y. (2018). Why is price disper-
sion higher online than offline? The impact of retailer type and ISCTE-IUL. Her research explores how patients, consumers and
shopping risk on price dispersion. Journal of Retailing, 94(2), clinicians perceive, judge, and decide when dealing with e-health
136–153. and technological innovation for physical and mental health. Her
research also explores mental health stigma and clinical decision-
making processes, including self-regulation and suffering percep-
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHI ES
tions. Sofia also does research in self-help online programs for
physical and mental health.
Jo~ao Niza Braga is currently a postdoc researcher at Cato
 lica
Lisbon School of Business and Economics. He received his Master
and PhD in Psychology from the University of Lisbon. His
research explores how and under what conditions people use
SUPPORTING INF ORMATION
intuitive processes to guide consumer choices, economical deci-
Additional supporting information may be found in the online version
sions, and social interactions in the workplace. He is currently
of the article at the publisher's website.
interested in examining how intuition is used to make sense of
hedonic experiences and how online contexts may shape con-
sumer and health behaviors. How to cite this article: Niza Braga, J., & Jacinto, S. (2022).
Effortless online shopping? How online shopping contexts
Sofia Jacinto is currently a research associate at the FHNW, Uni-
prime heuristic processing. Journal of Consumer Behaviour,
versity of Applied Sciences, Olten, Switzerland and at University
21(4), 743–755. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2032
of Bern, Switzerland. She received her PhD in Psychology from