How Greedy People Respond to Missing Discounts: Insatiability and Inaction Inertia

Greed is the insatiable desire for more. In three preregistered high-powered experiments, we examined the role of dispositional greed in inaction inertia, the phenomenon that people less likely act on a discount after missing a more attractive one. In Study 1 with a within-subjects design, we found strong evidence that higher greed weakens inaction inertia such that greedy people always want more and are less influenced by missed discounts. Studies 2 and 3 failed to replicate this moderation, both in between- and within-subjects designs. An integrative data analysis suggests that the relationship between greed and inaction inertia is more complex, with non-linearity and facet-specific effects. Overall, our results indicate that people dispositionally differ in how missed discounts influence future purchase decisions as a function of greed, but that these differences are more intricate than what current theorizing on greed predicts.