Another effect that the desire to avoid regret can have is to induce people not to act at all, what is called inaction inertia. Imagine being in the market for a sofa and seeing one you like on sale for 30 percent below list price. It’s fairly early in your search, and you think that you may be able to do better, so you pass up the sale. Several weeks of shopping fail to turn up anything better, so you go back to buy the one you saw earlier. The trouble is that now it’s selling for 10 percent off list price. Do you buy it? For many shoppers, the answer is no. If they buy it, there will be no
...more
That happens a lot :-(
