The prevalence and potential harm of defaults in online shopping
Research on online defaults carried out in 2 phases, a prevalence study and an online choice experiment, including a post-experiment survey.
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Details
A default is when online retailers either preselect, mimic preselection, or enhance the prominence of certain options that a consumer may face when making purchases online (for example, different options for shipping).
This study lasted from January 2024 to March 2024 and covered 2 stages.
The first stage was a prevalence study of 558 consumer journeys to determine the prevalence of different types of defaults on common websites used to make purchases online.
The second stage was an online choice experiment and survey, where 5,889 participants made decisions on a platform designed to look like a realistic online retailer.
The experiment focused on the use of both preselected and ‘mimic’ preselection defaults for shipping options and protection plan add-ons as these were found to be the most prevalent, relevant use of defaults in the first stage of the study.
Key findings
The prevalence study identified 412 instances of defaults across nearly half (49%) of the sampled websites and apps. However, 64% of these defaults directed users towards cheaper or similarly priced options.
The experiment found that consumers’ behaviour was impacted significantly by the ‘preselected’ default but not by ‘mimic’ default compared to settings with no defaults. For pre-selected defaults there was a large effect where consumers were 60% to 70% more likely to select the more expensive option.