Novelty, preferences, and fashion: when goods are unsettling

There is a whole class of goods - those semi-durable and durable "conveniences"-for which efficiency and functionality seem not to be the main characteristics of appeal, but rather the variability they display in their design properties and in their connections with other goods. These goods have not been much dealt with in economics, yet these are the goods whose new variants households seem to consume in numbers, to which consumers become addicted, and in which fashions appear and disappear. In this paper, I offer a framework for understanding these phenomena without having to resort to one or another form of irrationality on the part of consumers. The rationality I suggest however has to include also the cognitive and affective problems that arise when novelty appears. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.