Workshop’s Topic: As the population in the world continues to age, a growing number of elderly consumers are actively involved in making consumption decisions for themselves and their families. This demographic trend is accompanied by diverse cognitive profiles among older adults ranging from healthy aging to mild cognitive impairment and dementia, such as Alzheimers disease (AD), which are characterized by progressive memory loss and language dysfunctions. However, there remains a general lack of attention from consumer researchers in understanding the decision-making processes of older adults and the quality of decisions they make, especially for those with neurodegenerative conditions. This study reports on a novel open-ended decision-making task from a large and diverse sample of dementia patients and age-matched healthy controls (N=93). We defined metrics capturing memory- and value-based decision errors, and found dissociable patterns of impairments in AD vs. behavioral varianet frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) patients, such that AD and bvFTD patients showed higher memory- and value-based decision errors, respectively. Furthermore, semantic fluency was a strong transdiagnostic predictor of impairments driven by memory retrieval capability. Our findings highlight the typology, frequency, and functional importance of decision errors as symptoms of AD and bvFTD. These findings have implications for marketers, policymakers, and healthcare professionals in understanding and catering to the needs of aging consumers.

Time and Location: 10:00 AM (GMT+8), Room A823 (School of Management)

Online: 434 720 026 (Tencent Meeting Number)

Language: Bilingual (Chinese and English)