Essays on Dynamic Updating of Consumer Preferences

Essays on Dynamic Updating of Consumer Preferences
Author: Tong Lu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

Consumers dynamically update their preferences over time based on information learned through product search and consumption experiences, particularly in online media. Using three unique datasets from different domains, we address specific ways in which firms can use rich information about their customers' behaviors to improve (1) the visual display of products on a webpage in online shopping, (2) predictions of new product adoption in online gaming, and (3) the timing of product release in online learning. First, we explore how consumers visually search through product options using eye-tracking data from two experiments conducted on the websites of two online clothing stores, which can inform retailers on how to position products on a virtual webpage. Second, we examine how consumers' variety-seeking preferences change depending on past consumption outcomes within the context of an online multi-player video game, which can be used to improve predictions of new product adoption. Third, we use clickstream data from an online education platform to test theories of goal progress, knowledge accumulation, and boundedly rational forward-looking behavior, which can be used to explain binge consumption patterns and inform content providers on the best way to structure and release content. In each of these three projects, we build a mathematical model of individual decisions, with the parameterization grounded in theories of consumer behavior, and we demonstrate through in-sample prediction that our model is able to capture specific heterogeneous patterns within the data. We then test that our model is able to make out-of-sample predictions related to managerial interventions, and empirically verify our predictions using either lab experiments or new field data following a natural experiment policy change.

Essays on Dynamic Consumers' Brand Choice

Essays on Dynamic Consumers' Brand Choice
Author: Nahyeon Bak
Publisher:
Total Pages: 85
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation is a collection of essays on consumer's state dependent choice. In many consumers packaged goods markets, consumer's brand choice is highly persistent because of state dependence where past choice directly influence present choice. Chapter I investigates why consumer choices show state dependence by testing two competing theories: learning and switching costs. To test them, I used a Nielsen consumer panel data set including a long history of repeated purchases by 28,724 households from 2006-2015. Reduced form estimates suggest that the results align with learning, but not switching costs. I also find the only the first and second brand experiences affect present choice. In Chapter II, consistent with reduced-form analysis, I hypothesize that under learning behavior, if consumers try a new brand, consumers are likely to choose a smaller size than before because of uncertainty on product information, if not, consumers are likely to choose a bigger size than before because of lower price per unit with a bigger size. However, under switching cost behavior, consumers size choice will not be affected by brand switching decision. To test this causal relationship between brand switching decision and size choice, I adopt double machine learning method. Compared to previous reduced-form analysis, double machine learning model specifies a set of control variables without human judgement and it provides a causal parameter. Also, compared to naive or prediction based machine learning models, it overcomes the regularization bias by using Neyman orthogonality and over-fitting problems by using sample splitting method. As a result, I find that consumer's new trial on a brand leads to choose a smaller size choice than before where it supports learning behavior, not switching costs behavior. These reduced form studies of Chapter I and II motivate structural approaches to empirical modeling. Chapter III tests the two competing theories with a structural demand model that incorporated variety-seeking behavior. Previous studies failed to explain how states affect two decisions: not only persistent brand choice, but also brand switching that usually variety-seeker have shown. To incorporate these decisions, I develop a dynamic panel demand model with multiple discreteness choices for estimating preferences where some consumers switch brand frequently even most consumers show persistent brand choice. I first find that consumers learn fast, which disputes previous slowdown learning models such as Bayesian learning. Second, state dependence of consumer choice diminishes with time elapsed from each purchase. These findings are robust to controlling variety seeking behavior or not. Combining Chapter I, II, and III, I conclude that with the assumption on myopic consumers, because of learning behavior, consumers show persistent brand choice in the initial shopping period, but as they exposure to the same brands again and again, they become satiated the brand. In other words, consumers show diminishing marginal utility over quantity consumed. Therefore, consumers switch a brand.

Essays on Consumer Search and Interlocking Directorates

Essays on Consumer Search and Interlocking Directorates
Author: Silva Deželan
Publisher: Rozenberg Publishers
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2001
Genre:
ISBN: 9051708289

Information is crucial to make good decisions, but obtaining and providing information often comes at a cost. Consumers and firms both need to balance these costs and benefits of obtaining and providing information in order to make the best decisions. The research in this thesis investigates several questions that pertain to the acquisition and provision of information. In the first part of this thesis it is assumed that consumers are not fully informed about the prices or availability of a product they want to buy. Consumers can search for information, but this comes at a cost. At the same time, shops can influence these costs. In the first two studies in this part, shops have the possibility to advertise. An advertisement provides information to consumers and reduces the search costs. We investigate, among other things, the pricing behavior of shops and the relation between search and advertising. The third study in this part of the thesis considers the location choice of shops. Locating together in a shopping mall reduces the search costs of consumers. This increases the competition between shops and lowers the prices, but we show that at the same time the sales volume increases. The total effect of locating together on profits is generally positive. The second part of this thesis considers director ties (also named interlocks). A director who has several directorships in different firms can serve as an information bridge between the different firms. At the same time, interlocking directors are busy and form a homogenous group. Data from the Netherlands show that in The Netherlands the positive information providing effect of interlocks is outweighed by a negative busyness and homogenous group effect.

Consumer Research

Consumer Research
Author: Morris B. Holbrook
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
Total Pages: 438
Release: 1995-06-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This collection of essays provides a personal, thought-provoking and often humorous documentation of the evolution of the field of consumer research. The book highlights aspects of hotly debated issues that surround this field of inquiry, and presents a picture of how consumer research has grown and developed over the past 25 years.

Three Essays on Consumer Search Behaviour in Experimental Market Environments

Three Essays on Consumer Search Behaviour in Experimental Market Environments
Author: Changxia Ke
Publisher:
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010
Genre: Consumer behavior
ISBN:

This thesis investigates consumer search behavior in different contexts and its implications on certain market outcomes. It consists of three self-contained essays. Part one investigates if people search optimally and how price promotions (such as the provision of price discounts) influence search intensity and risk-taking behavior. We start with a typical sequential search task in a finite time horizon (with exogenously determined price dispersion) as the baseline treatment. In the two experimental treatments, exogenous discounts are introduced to the search process. The treatments differ in the amount of information on the discounts revealed to the subjects. Subjects' search behavior is roughly consistent with optimality for a risk-neutral agent, but significantly influenced by the introduction of discount vouchers. We find that subjects' search intensity is significantly reduced if they are in a shop that offers discounts, even when the monetary benefit induced by the discount has been taken into account. This suggests that people seem to gain extra non-monetary utility from buying a discounted product. Alternatively, subjects might overestimate the value of a discount. Following the findings in part one, we focus on price-framing effects of discounts on consumer search behavior in part two. In order to isolate the price-framing effect from all other possible influences, we adopt an extremely simple two-shop search model in which a consumer who sees the price for an item in a shop has to decide either to buy it or to incur a search cost to learn the ex-ante uncertain price in a second shop. The experiment is designed such that a rational buyer should make identical decisions in the base treatment (where prices are posted as net prices in both shops) and in the experimental treatments (where the price in one of the shops is framed as a gross price with a discount, holding the net-price constant). Using structural estimation of the observed risk preferences, we find that people tend to be more risk-averse and hence buy from the initial shop more often in the discount treatments, regardless of where the discount is offered. The seemingly trivial change to a discount-framing increases the complexity of the decision problem. Subjects reveal a tendency to stick with the comparatively less complex options more frequently as the complexity of the decision problem increases. However, this bias declines with experience, as subjects become more and more familiar with the framing. In part three, we study search behavior in a market experiment, where prices are determined endogenously by human players. More specifically, we examine the behavioral factors and the underlying mechanism which drive the widely observed asymmetric price adjustment to cost shocks (in a world with costly search behavior and information asymmetry). We show that price dispersion, as well as asymmetric price adjustment to cost shocks, arises in experimental markets, even though the standard theory predicts neither. We find that after controlling all the potential theoretical factors, the observed price dispersion can be explained by the presence of bounded rational play. Under price dispersion, asymmetric price adjustment arises naturally, as it is harder for buyers to learn that a negative cost shock has taken place. Learning is much quicker after a positive shock.

Social Science Research

Social Science Research
Author: Anol Bhattacherjee
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781475146127

This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.