Behavioral frontiers in choice modeling

We review the discussion at a workshop whose goal was to achieve a better integration among behavioral, economic, and statistical approaches to choice modeling. The workshop explored how current approaches to the specification, estimation, and application of choice models might be improved to better capture the diversity of processes that are postulated to explain how consumers make choices. Some specific challenges include how to capture and parsimoniously describe heterogeneous mixes of heuristic choice rules, methods for building realistic models of choice, and nontraditional methods for estimating models. An agenda for important future work in these areas is also proposed.     

Consumers’ evaluation of allocation policies for scarce health care services: Vested interest activation trumps spatial and temporal distance

The allocation of scarce health care service resources often requires trade-offs between individual and collective outcomes (e.g., when some individuals benefit more strongly from a given policy than others). Based on construal level theory, one would expect that consumers cognitively represent the individual and collective outcomes of an allocation policy at different levels of abstraction and that they evaluate allocation policies more positively when there is congruency between the cognitive representation of the policy??s focal outcome and the spatial and temporal distance inherently present in the policy??s decision context (e.g., allocation decisions on a future policy). However, we hypothesize that this congruency effect can be overruled by a high vested interest mindset that is activated by an individual??s recent personal experience with a health care service provider. Since a high vested interest mindset increases the relevance of the allocation policy implementation for the individual because s/he perceives strong personal consequences, we propose that for consumers with recent experience the evaluation of an allocation policy that focuses on individual outcomes is higher than that of a policy that focuses on collective outcomes irrespective of the spatial and temporal distance in the decision context. Results of a hypothetical experiment among a representative sample of the general population confirm the congruency effects in the new domain of health care service allocation policies, and provide support for the proposed overruling effect of the activation of a high vested interest mindset by recent personal experience on spatial and temporal distance.     

The Effect of Attribute Variation on Consumer Choice Consistency

We study the effect of shifts in attribute level differences on consumer choice consistency. Choice consistency is measured as the variance of the random error component in the consumer utility function: the smaller this variance, the higher choice consistency. We hypothesize that due to increased choice difficulty, choice consistency decreases if attribute level differences increase while average utility level differences between alternatives remain the same. In our empirical illustration we focus on the impact of price level shifts on choice consistency in conjoint choice experiments. Our results show that choice consistency decreases as price level differences increase and absolute price levels increase.     

Push and pull strategies in multi-stage assembly systems

In convergent multi-stage systems usually a pull strategy is assumed, where demand at the end stock-point triggers demands (or production) at the proceeding stock-point, whereas in the push strategy demand is triggered at the initial stock-point. We will extensively describe the calculation procedure for the push strategy. For analyzing the pull strategy we will use existing methods. The equivalence and differences between these two strategies will be illustrated for a two-stage assembly case.     

The consumer production journey: marketing to consumers as co-producers in the sharing economy

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science - New digital technologies not only support consumers in better fulfilling their own consumption needs but also enable them to create greater value for...     

Promoting Interactive Decision Aids on Retail Websites: A Message Framing Perspective with New versus Traditional Focal Actions

Online retailers significantly benefit when consumers use interactive decision aids (IDAs). In this study, we investigate how to best design messages that promote IDA use. Using an extended message framing perspective, we propose that messages about consumers’ traditional action (searching) increase usage intentions more than messages about the new action (IDA use). Results from two experiments confirm that this holds across both high and low involvement categories and in particular when the traditional action frame is combined with a loss outcome. We also demonstrate that familiarity with the message's focal action mediates this effect.