Secondly, the expected utility of the anticipated choice situation after having
received information concerning one of the uncertain attributes must incorporate
the possibility that further information is acquired after having received the message.
That is, the expected utility of acquiring information concerning one of
the uncertain goods is a function of how the forward looking consumer evaluates
the utility of future decisions whether or not to search for information, based on
the set of messages already received. Naturally, one might wonder if consumers
may be safely assumed to fully anticipate such elaborate sequences of potential
information search. The assumption of more or less myopic behaviour, modelling
individuals’ anticipation of only a limited number of future information searches
(e.g. no or only one additional search after having received a message), may be
more intuitive (e.g. Hauser et al., 1993; Chorus et al., 2006, 2007b).