Open Access

Philipp Reiser

• Individual consumer characteristics, particularly personality traits, have received limited attention within the extensive body of research on the attraction effect, despite the general consensus that the decision-making process influences this phenomenon. This study seeks to shed light on the question, which role personality traits as individual consumer characteristics play for the attraction effect. To investigate this, an experiment was conducted using an online survey. The personality of the subjects (N = 125) is specified as scores of the Big Five personality traits, assessed using the IPIP-D-120, a German-language self-report measure instrument for the Five-Factor Model. Based on participants’ hypothetical choices on eighteen product selection tasks designed to elicit attraction effects, individual susceptibility to the attraction effect is measured. Potential effects of personality on participants’ degrees of susceptibility to the attraction effect are analyzed using multivariate regressions. The results suggest that two dimensions of personality moderate the attraction effect: Decoys may be less likely to induce attraction effects among individuals scoring high on Neuroticism (β = -0.18, p = .08), while consumers scoring high on Openness to Experience may be more prone to decoy-induced choices (β = 0.19, p = .08). However, these findings should be questioned until they are confirmed by potentially future studies, as there are limitations regarding their validity and reliability.