Marketing

We present a method that dynamically designs elicitation questions for estimating preferences, focusing on the parameters of cumulative prospect theory and time discounting models. Typically these parameters are elicited by presenting decision makers with a series of choices between alternatives, gambles or delayed payments. The method dynamically (i.e., adaptively) designs such choices to optimize the information provided by each choice, while leveraging the distribution of the parameters across decision makers (heterogeneity) and capturing response error.

Traditional advertising, such as TV and print advertising, primarily builds awareness of a firm's product among consumers, whereas sponsored search advertising on a search engine can target consumers closer to making a purchase because they reveal their interest by searching for a relevant keyword.

Over the course of a repeated game, players often exhibit learning in selecting their best response. Research in economics and marketing has identified two key types of learning rules: belief and reinforcement. It has been shown that players use either one of these learning rules or a combination of them, as in the Experience-Weighted Attraction (EWA) model. Accounting for such learning may help in understanding and predicting the outcomes of games.

The diagnosticity of feelings in judgment depends not only on their representativeness and relevance, but also on people's trust in their feelings in general. Trust in feelings is the degree to which individuals believe that their feelings generally point toward the "right" direction in judgments and decisions.

The modal scientific approach in consumer research is to deduce hypotheses from existing theory about relationships between theoretic constructs, test those relationships experimentally, and then show “process” evidence via moderation and mediation. This approach has its advantages, but other styles of research also have much to offer. We distinguish among alternative research styles in terms of their philosophical orientation (theory-driven vs. phenomenon-driven) and their intended contribution (understanding a substantive phenomenon vs. building or expanding theory).

Seven studies show that compared to people with lower trust in their feelings, those with higher trust in their feelings were better able to predict the outcome of a wide variety of future events, including (a) future movie successes, (b) the 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential nominee, (c) the winner of <em>American Idol</em>, (d) movements of the Dow Jones Index, and even (e) the weather.

In recent years academic research has focused on understanding and modeling the survey response process. This paper examines an understudied systematic response tendency in surveys: the extent to which observed responses are subject to state dependence, i.e., response carryover from one item to another independent of specific item content. We develop a statistical model that simultaneously accounts for state dependence, item content, and scale usage heterogeneity.

In this report, the authors quantify the strategic relationship between brand management (brand equity) and customer management (the components of CLV), and demonstrate the role that marketing activities play in this relationship. They examine a unique database from the U.S. automobile market, comprised of 10 years of survey-based brand equity measures as well as acquisition rates, retention rates, and customer profitability.

This paper analyzes optimal decisions concerning the size of the sample and the price of the paid content for online publishers of digital information goods when sampling serves the dual purpose of disclosing content quality and generating advertising revenue. We show in a reduced-form model how the publisher?s optimal ratio of advertising revenue to sales revenue is linked to characteristics of both the content market and the advertising market.