On the Mental Accounting of Restricted-Use Funds: How Gift Cards Change What People Purchase

This article emphasizes the role of categorization in mental accounting and pro-poses that once a mental account is established, purchases that are highly con-gruent with the purpose of the mental account (i.e., typical category members) will be more preferred in selection decisions compared to purchases that are less con-gruent (i.e., atypical category members). This hypothesis is tested in the context of gift cards. Six studies find that people shopping with a retailer-specific gift card—and so, the authors argue, possessing a retailer-specific mental account—express an increased preference for products more typical of the retailer com-pared to those shopping with more fungible currency. This pattern is found to oc-cur for both well-known retailers, where people already possess product-typicality knowledge, and fictional retailers, where product-typicality cues are provided. An alternative account based on semantic priming is not supported by these data. These results both broaden the contemporary understanding of how mental ac-counting influences preferences and provide retailers deeper insight into their cus-tomers’ decision processes.