Why not sell lottery tickets in a pharmacy: on conflicting product features and consumer choice

Abstract

This article reports data from a questionnaire study indicating that in a consumer choice problem, additional choice options can cause a tangible disutility that people prefer to avoid if the additional options exhibit features that conflict with those of the old ones, for example, lottery tickets (gambling) and health-care products (health and reliability).

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Almut Balleer, Bernhard Ganglmair, Fabian Herweg and Jörg Oechssler for helpful comments. We thank Yvonne Zoeller-Lüddemann from the Königs-Apotheke Bonn for encouraging support.

Notes

¹In a similar vein, political parties may alienate their supporters beyond what seems reasonable if they advocate actions that conflict with their usual programme, for example belligerent actions despite a generally peaceful programme.

²For rules in German see http://www.lotto.de/navigation/lotto-6aus49/spielregeln/

³Interestingly, one pharmacist refused to make the questionnaire available to his customers simply because he disliked even the idea of his customers being asked whether they could imagine buying Lotto-tickets in his pharmacy.

⁴This may explain why in some countries, for example, Sweden, supermarkets indeed sell lottery tickets.