Many of his former PhD students (such as Ravi Dhar, Ziv Carmon, Stephen Nowlis, Aimee Drolet, and Ran Kivetz to name a few) hold senior positions at some of the best universities in the world.
He demonstrated the "compromise effect", whereby consumers often select the middle or, alternatively, an "extreme" option in a set regardless of its real values.
They demonstrated the implications of this tendency (or heuristic) with respect to participation in loyalty programs and the evaluation of other offers and opportunities.
Dhar and Simonson examined conditions that lead consumers to either "go all the way" (e.g., buy a tasty but unhealthy entree and also tasty but unhealthy dessert), referred to as highlighting, versus trying to balance things out (e.g., on a particular trip, flying first class but taking an inexpensive shuttle bus to the airport).
In particular, initial evidence obtained by Simonson and Sela indicates that many consumer preferences (e.g., for compromise options, pleasurable versus useful products, chocolate, jazz, science fiction movies, and hybrid cars) are significantly heritable.