Cognitive Dissonance (Buyer's Remorse)

by Lauren Savoy, Holley McConnell, Ben Wirtz

Cognitive Dissonance, developed by Leon Festinger, is the theory of two conflicting ideas occurring simultaneously. It is the push and pull of two different opinions or beliefs. Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

To us common folk, it’s known as buyer’s remorse, It usually occurs when one impulsively buys a product without much thought which later they regret. Frequently, the purchasing of higher priced items, or those that could be considered “unnecessary” causes cognitive dissonance. “Did I make the right decision?” “Is this item really necessary?”“Maybe this wasn’t what I really wanted.” These questions are common among those who experience buyer’s remorse.

Cognitive dissonance can occur in the final stage of the consumer buying process. The first stage is the need of recognition and problem awareness, then comes information research, following is the evaluation of alternatives and finally the consumer purchases the item. Once the item is purchased he or she can evaluate the product.

The differences of cognitive dissonance involve price, popularity, value, and size. Price includes: high-involvement purchases – a car, house, expensive watch, boat, etc. These usually take more thought prior to the purchase, and has a larger chance for cognitive dissonance to occur due to the large lump of money given away. Low-involvement purchases usually have the opposite effect.

How to reduce the regret? The way to reduce buyer’s remorse is to gather information prior to purchasing the product. Some examples are: discovering whether the product has warranties, exchanges, returns, money back guarantees, etc.

When looking for people to interview, we approached people associated with the local community and businesses. We heard a variety of answers in regard to buyer’s remorse, which tied into our theory. It appeared that the higher the price of a product, the more thought was put into the purchase – the lower the price, the higher the impulse.

Team "Cognitive Dissonance"

Lauren Savoy, Ben Wirtz, Holley McConnell