Why Seeing the Total Does Not Make Switching Easy

The persistence of a low-base choice after fees appear is the problem to diagnose here. The subject remains consumer reaction to drip pricing, but the focus shifts from whether the first price changes selection to why a shopper may stay with that selection after seeing a more expensive total. The useful question is not whether consumers can read the final number; it is whether restarting still feels worth the time, effort, and psychological cost once the original choice has acquired momentum.

The perceived cost of starting over

A restart decision is a comparison between two uncertain quantities. On one side is the cost of reopening the search: returning to an earlier page, finding the alternative, repeating the add-on choices, and spending more time deciding. On the other is the possible benefit: a lower total, a better fit, or the knowledge that the original option was not the best deal. Drip pricing can make the first quantity feel large and the second feel small, even when the actual time and saving point in the opposite direction.

Study 1a gives this diagnosis a concrete scale. Participants in the drip condition who initially chose the lower-base airline were asked why they did not restart. They agreed that starting over would take too much time and that most airlines charged for baggage and seat selection. After excluding two extreme time estimates, those who did not restart thought a restart would take about 341 seconds—roughly five and a half minutes. Participants who did restart actually took about 75 seconds, or roughly one and a quarter minutes, in the comparable process. The non-restarters also expected to save about $15, while the average saving among those who did restart was about $26.

These are not simply cases of shoppers refusing to do arithmetic. They are cases in which the perceived cost-benefit calculation was miscalibrated. If restarting appears to require several minutes for a small possible saving, completing the current purchase can look reasonable. If the restart is in fact quick and the saving substantial, the same decision looks different. The crucial variable is the estimate available at the moment the consumer must choose between persistence and revision.

The earlier evidence reviewed in the FTC’s economic analysis of hotel resort fees points to a related process. In an experiment involving mandatory postage and handling fees, consumers who encountered charges only after beginning the purchase searched less and made more buying mistakes than those shown transparent totals. They could terminate after seeing the fees and the final total, yet many behaved as though revising the initial decision required more cognitive effort than it was worth. Repeated exposure reduced the errors but did not eliminate them.

Study 2 tests the cost side more directly. Participants first saw the prices of two airlines, but some could have forgotten the unchosen price while navigating the add-on screens. At the moment when they saw the total for their chosen airline and decided whether to complete or restart, one group was shown the alternative airline’s base fare again.