Attention
Attention Shoppers! What You Need to Know About Advertising
There's an increasing focus on attention in consumer decision-making.
Posted January 20, 2025 Reviewed by Tyler Woods
Key points
- Theories on information processing show how different types of information can affect judgments and attitudes.
- The attention economy highlights the challenge of too much information and competition for consumer attention.
- Behavioral economics has become interested in how attention can explain different aspects of decision-making.
- It may help advance solutions to the detrimental effects of the attention economy, such as attention theft.
The 1920s is often considered a period that accelerated the rise of modern society as we know it today. Economically, it’s associated with the introduction of the industrial assembly line and the growth of mass consumption and mass communication. Culturally, the emphasis was on individualism and rationality. During the same time period, behaviorism became dominant in psychology. This theory sought to shift attention away from mental events, which were seen as too subjective, to those that can be observed, namely overt behavior. The stimulus-response model applied by behaviorism simply focused on what goes into the brain and what comes out on the other side. For example, we may observe that students who receive praise from their teacher for completing homework are more likely to do their homework in the future.
In the 1950s and 1960s, psychology underwent changes in thinking that are usually referred to as the cognitive revolution. The brain was conceptualized as a kind of computer with mental structures that process information. Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a great example of this view. This theory distinguishes between central (deliberative) and peripheral (automatic) routes of persuasion. Applied to consumers, for example, research shows how and when different aspects of promotional messages affect attitudes towards a product. In the central route, consumers usually assess the quality of arguments (e.g., the technical features of a car), which requires effortful information processing. In the peripheral route, consumers judge the quality of a product with a more superficial perspective, such as product aesthetics (e.g., the design and color of a car). This happens by processing information quickly and intuitively. The ELM suggests that the content of marketing campaigns can be tailored to different product types, contexts, and consumer segments to maximize its persuasive power.
Information and the Attention Economy
Recent years have also introduced us to problems that involve not only information quality, but also the overabundance of information. Consumers are bombarded with more marketing messages than ever before. As Herbert Simon noted, "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
The term attention economy is frequently associated with Simon’s ideas. In the information age, attention has become increasingly scarce. The competition to draw consumers’ attention to particular products or product attributes has stiffened. While the past focus in research and business was mostly on the content that enters consumers’ brains, today’s focus is increasingly also on whether the content enters their heads or thinking processes in the first place.
Attention in Behavioral Economics
In recent years, this shift has been particularly evident in behavioral economics, which is concerned with the influence of uncertainty and choice contexts on decision-making. Behavioral economics combines the behaviorist focus on observing what people actually do with the cognitivist focus on mental processes. This field is largely a response or antidote to neoclassical economics. The importance of values of rationality and individualism in the 1920s, mentioned earlier, may have helped consolidate similar ideas in neoclassical economics: people act to maximize utility based on their own preferences and self-interest.
Behavioral economics has produced a myriad of theories that capture limits in rationality, self-control, and self-interest. However, the discipline has been missing an overarching theory or common thread that enables us to simplify this large web of biases. The concept of attention may be one possible answer, as a lack of attention may explain a range of different behaviors and biases. A good illustration is the so-called left-digit bias. This happens when consumers pay too much attention to the left-most digit of a price. It makes a price of 4 dollars and 99 cents seem cheaper than it really is.
Inattention is a great explanation of inaction as well. Take an everyday example: going to the gym. Many people take out membership but end up using it less than expected. An experiment with gym customers found that sending customers reminder emails increases gym attendance. The researchers reached a simple conclusion: the repeated decision to exercise must, at least, in part, be explained by attention, since reminder emails do not provide incentives, facilitation, or persuasion to go to the gym but instead serve to bring the decision to the forefront of one's mind. In other words, non-attendance results not only from insufficient willpower or desire, but also a failure to focus attention on intentions.
Another example of inaction or inertia is the status quo bias. Consumers may stick with a choice they made in the past not as result of laziness or complacency, but because they pay limited attention to alternatives that are available to them. This could be anything, ranging from your choice of gym to cellphone plans. The process of switching incurs costs. Consumers often don’t pay attention to alternative providers because finding and processing information is costly (due to the time and hassle involved). They may also fail to consider changes in their own preferences or circumstances that may warrant a switch or hold mistaken beliefs about their needs.
Navigating the Attention Economy
With these attentional deficits in mind, what can companies do? Companies with a strong customer focus can make their customers aware of their options (e.g. to switch to a cellphone plan that fits their usage patterns better) in order to avoid losing them. At the same time, they will try to reach prospective customers with marketing. Returning to the concept of attention economy, estimates suggest that consumers in the United States were exposed to hundreds of marketing messages per day in the 1970s and thousands per day since the rise of the internet. While old concerns about persuasive influence have not disappeared, the focus has moved to worries about the oversaturation of stimuli and attention manipulation. Competition for attention means that companies need to enhance the salience of their messages to cut through the noise and get noticed by consumers. People tend to pay attention to the most noticeable stimuli in their environment.
Some products, such as social media platforms, are all about the commodification of attention. Social media companies strive to maximize the total amount of time users spend on their platforms in order to be exposed to advertisements and generate data that can be monetized. At first glance, social media apps may appear to allow the use of “dead time”—attention that would otherwise be wasted. However, in most cases, they create opportunity costs by directing attention away from alternatives.
Some consumers no longer tolerate being bombarded with information and messages. The concept of attention theft has become a common term. It’s used to describe companies that attempt to garner consumers’ attention without their consent and without offering anything in return. There are three different ways in which this could be remedied. Firstly, consumers could demand legislation that restricts companies’ practices that could amount to attention theft. Secondly, consumers could get compensated for the value they create as a result of attention theft, e.g., their personal data. Finally, consumers can resist the attention economy and limit their exposure to stimuli and technology associated with attention theft.
Behavioral economics research on attention can play a crucial role in helping us understand how the attention economy affects decision-making and advancing solutions to the detrimental effects of information overload in the 21st century.