Resumen de The top-ten effect: : consumers' subjective categorization of ranked lists
Mathew S. Isaac, Robert M. Schindler
Long lists of ranked items, such as Bloomberg Businessweek�s rankings of MBA programs, are ubiquitous in Western culture, and they are often used in consumer decision making. Six studies show that consumers mentally subdivide ranked lists into a smaller set of categories and exaggerate differences between consecutive items adjacent to category boundaries. Further, despite prior work suggesting that people might subjectively produce place-value categories (e.g., single digits, the twenties), this research shows that consumers interpret ranked lists by generating round-number categories ending in zero or five (e.g., top 10, top 25). Thus, for example, consumers will more favorably evaluate improvements in rank that cross round-number-category boundaries (e.g., shifting from rank 11 to rank 10) than improvements in rank that cross place-value-category boundaries (e.g., shifting from rank 10 to rank 9). This phenomenon, labeled the top-ten effect, occurs because round numbers are cognitively accessible to consumers due to their prevalent use in everyday communication.
