Anchoring effect in business

Abstract

In many business and managerial decisions, accurate estimation of numeric attributes is crucial, but such estimates are often biased by a previously considered value—a cognitive bias known as the anchoring effect. This paper provides an overview of the current state of the literature on the anchoring effect, with a particular focus on its applications in business settings. First, we summarize different processes that may underlie the anchoring effect, which include conversational inferences, insufficient adjustment from the anchor value, selective accessibility of information compatible with an anchor, and distortion of a response scale. Second, we review the applications of anchoring across various business practices, such as predictions, valuations, negotiations, auctions, promotions, and job performance evaluations. We provide examples of potential sources of anchors in these domains and discuss limitations of the existing studies. Next, we describe the challenge of debiasing anchoring and introduce potential strategies for reducing the influence of the anchoring effect. Finally, we discuss topics that have been underexplored and suggest avenues for future research on the anchoring effect.