From Functional Efficiency to Temporal Efficiency: Multifunctional Products Increase Consumer Impatience

Multifunctional products are ubiquitous in consumers' daily lives. However, scant research has examined whether and how the presence of multifunctional products systematically alters consumer behavior beyond product evaluations and adoption. Across four experiments and three supplementary studies, the authors identify a multifunction‐impatience effect. They show that after exposure to multifunctional (vs. single‐function) products, consumers are more likely to choose a smaller but sooner (vs. a larger but later) reward (Study 1), report more impatience when waiting for the web search results to load and perceive the loading time as longer (Study 2), and are willing to pay more for expedited shipping (Study 3). The authors further show that the effects occur because multifunctional products activate an efficiency goal among consumers, which renders them less patient (studies 2 and 3). In addition to the regular, “sequential” multifunctional products for which each of the functions has a specific usage situation, the proposed effect also applies to “simultaneous” multifunctional products whose functions operate simultaneously during consumption (Study 4). Taken together, this research broadens the scholarly understanding of the effects of multifunctional products from consumers' responses to these products to the unintended impact of such products on consumer impatience.