Marketing Implications of Framing in the Decision‑Making

Abstract

Framing is a psychological concept closely related with decision‑making. It says, that the way the information is served to the recipients, affects their opinion about a certain issue and, consequently, their decisions. Frame presents perception of the reality, since the limits of rationality often don’t allow people to capture the reality in its complexity. Framing is manifested in several ways. The first relates to the starting point from which the reality is perceived. This dimension causes that people perceive differently the description of decision options formulated in terms of gains (positive frame) or losses (negative frame). The second dimension relates to the size or the width of the frame, i.e. whether the reality is seen from a wider or a narrower perspective. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of framing on the decision‑making. The framing effect was studied by the analysis of answers to three problems, which were part of a broader questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was inspired or compiled from similar researches. The sample was 176 graduate university students (41 % men) of management major. The basic descriptive statistics and independent samples t‑test were used for it. The results proved that the way the problem was framed to the respondents determined the outcomes of their decision‑making. The implications both for the overall managerial decision‑making and more specifically for the marketing practice are presented as well.

Keywords

• framing
• decision‑making
• psychological factors
• prospect theory
• marketing