{"id":1250,"slug":"haubl-trifts-2000-marketing-science","title":"Häubl & Trifts 2000 (Marketing Science 19(1):4-21) — controlled lab experiment showing interactive decision aids improve decision quality and reduce search effort","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["conversion-rate","customer-facing-tools"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** The closest legitimate academic work on interactive web tools is **Häubl & Trifts (2000), \"Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping Environments: The Effects of Interactive Decision Aids,\" *Marketing Science* 19(1):4-21**. A controlled lab experiment showed interactive decision aids improve consumers' decision *quality* (better matches between purchases and preferences) and reduce search effort.\n\n**Source:** https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.19.1.4.15178\n\n**Confidence:** Verified (peer-reviewed).\n\n**Caveats:**\n- Measured **decision quality** in a simulated store environment, *not* real-world website conversion.\n- 2000 era — pre-modern e-commerce; reproductions in modern contexts not surveyed here.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** Honest defence of *why* a well-built calculator can be useful — it can genuinely help a buyer choose better. But it specifically does not support the vendor claim that interactive tools \"convert\" better than static pages. See [[rule-disregard-vendor-conversion-stats-for-interactive-content]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-customer-facing-calculators-smb-june-2026","title":"Research brief: customer-facing calculators & tools for SMBs — the honest case (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"caveats-customer-facing-calculators-vendor-marketing-base","title":"Caveats for the customer-facing-calculators brief: every conversion-lift figure is unproven; nearly all are vendor-self-reported","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-20T16:50:09.632Z","updated_at":"2026-06-20T16:50:09.632Z"}