Going back to move forward? How search revisits on a website we built inform us about search outcomes

Why do consumers search some products more than once (revisit) before making a purchase decision? How are these revisits related to search outcomes, such as consumers’ consideration sets and choices? In this paper, we build an online shopping website and run an incentive-aligned research study to find out. We show that most consumers revisit with the goal of comparing products, followed second by an expressed desire to obtain more information, and third by forgetting. Also, we document the ways in which search behavior differs across revisit motivations. Products revisited with the goal of obtaining additional information and comparing are more likely to be purchased than those revisited due to forgetting. Interestingly, revisits also reveal information about consumers’ consideration sets, which are typically unobserved: most consumers have eliminated a product from consideration if they don’t revisit it. This behavior implies consideration sets are dynamic, which we illustrate. Finally, managerial implications and possible extensions of the results are discussed.