Same same, but different: consumers’ decision–making process and psychological disempowerment in the digital society

Abstract

Digital transformation has empowered consumers, but also increased the difficulty of decision making. Lacking a holistic understanding of how digital transformation has changed consumers’ decision-making processes and their perceptions of psychological disempowerment, we conducted a mixed-methods field experiment. We systematically and comprehensively compared the decision-making process in a traditional non-digital and a digital consumption context. Our results show that consumers can feel disempowered in both contexts, albeit under different conditions of information availability. Psychological disempowerment can be reduced in both contexts by seeking different sources of advice, but still leads to greater regret about the decision in the non-digital context.