Designing the solution: The impact of constraints on consumers' creativity

Across a variety of domains, consumers often choose to act as the designer of their own solution, sourcing the necessary components and assembling the parts to meet their specific goals. While thinking creatively is an integral part in the daily life of every consumer, surprisingly little research in marketing has examined the factors influencing such processes. In our research, we examine how input and time constraints influence the way in which consumers process information during a creative task and how those processes, in turn, influence the creativity of the solution. Paradoxically, we find that input constraints encourage more creative processing, provided the individual is not under significant time constraints.