From correspondents in Washington, United States, 12:30 PM IST

People apply different yardsticks while planning a major vacation next year or an immediate weekend trip, according to a study.

Kyeongheui Kim of Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea, Meng Zhang of Chinese University, Hong Kong) and Xiuping Li of National University of Singapore examined how consumers make choices.

These choices were influenced by factors like 'temporal distance' or time and 'social distance', the perceived closeness of the person for whom the purchase is being made, they wrote in a report that will be published in the December edition of the Journal of Consumer Research.

Consumers considered factors like convenience while deciding about matters closer in time or for people close to them, they found.

However, decisions on future purchases, or for someone not socially close, were governed by factors like the appeal or attractiveness of the object or the destination.

The study authors recommended that marketers should take distance into consideration when crafting different approaches.

(Staff Writer, © IANS)