Various decision contexts require the calculation of smaller recurring changes accumulated over time and their comparison to larger one-time changes (e.g., $100 periodic increase in monthly rent ...every year vs. a $1000 increase in rent at the end of 5 years). In both hypothetical and incentivized studies, we demonstrate an inaccuracy of estimations involving total cumulations of smaller recurring changes and single lump sums. We document this effect when individuals process increasing or decreasing changes in gains or losses (e.g., raises in wages or rent, discounts in membership fees). Importantly, these biases occur even when the changes are provided to the consumers as clear absolute dollar values as opposed to complex percentages. We discuss the theoretical contributions of our study as well as its implications for consumers, managers, and policy makers.
This research investigates how national culture interacts with marketing strategy to influence consumers’ organic post-consumption satisfaction ratings of entertainment products rich in cultural ...content. Drawing upon a communication theory framework, we develop hypotheses concerning multiple interaction effects between culture and marketing strategies on consumers’ product evaluations. We test these hypotheses by analyzing consumer reviews of 260 movies in 25 country markets. In support of our hypotheses, we find that the cultural congruence between the product and the market improves consumer reviews, and that the effect is stronger in cultures characterized by collectivism, femininity, and uncertainty avoidance, as well as for products more heavily loaded with cultural content. In addition, we find that the negative effect of delay in product launch timing weakens for cultures characterized by long-term orientation, and that the positive effect of advertising spending on consumer evaluations is stronger in cultures characterized by high power distance belief. These results provide practical insights into how managers should make decisions concerning product design, launch timing, and advertising strategies in international markets.
We demonstrate that decision contexts that involve sequential numerical changes over time can lead to suboptimal consumer choices in both incentivized and hypothetical studies. This is because, for ...such changes, an earlier outcome has a cumulative effect on the final total, which consumers tend to ignore. We document the prevalence of consumers' tendency to neglect this cumulative impact when processing sequential rent increases and price discounts as consumers focus on the naïve totals and trends formed by the consecutive price changes and choose economically inferior options. We propose a nudge that helps alert consumers about the cumulative effects and decrease their tendency to fall prey to this bias. We discuss the theoretical contributions as well as the implications for consumers, managers, and policymakers.
•Sequential movements of CAVs are modelled as multi-agent Markov decision processes.•A decentralized coordination multi-agent learning approach (DCL-AIM) is proposed.•DCL-AIM explicitly identifies ...and dynamically adapts agent coordination needs.•Effectiveness of DCL-AIM is demonstrated through extensive simulation scenarios.•DCL-AIM outperforms the benchmarks: FCFS, LQF and fixed signal control policies.
Conventional intersection managements, such as signalized intersections, may not necessarily be the optimal strategies when it comes to connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) environment. Autonomous intersection management (AIM) is tailored for CAVs aiming at replacing the conventional traffic control strategies. In this work, using the communication and computation technologies of CAVs, the sequential movements of vehicles through intersections are modelled as multi-agent Markov decision processes (MAMDPs) in which vehicle agents cooperate to minimize intersection delay with collision-free constraints. To handle the huge dimension scale incurred by the nature of multi-agent decision making problems, the state space of CAVs are decomposed into independent part and coordinated part by exploiting the structural properties of the AIM problem, and a decentralized coordination multi-agent learning approach (DCL-AIM) is proposed to solve the problem efficiently by exploiting both global and localized agent coordination needs in AIM. The main feature of the proposed approach is to explicitly identify and dynamically adapt agent coordination needs during the learning process so that the curse of dimensionality and environment nonstationarity problems in multi-agent learning can be alleviated.
The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated under a variety of traffic conditions. The comparison analysis is performed between DCL-AIM and the First-Come-First-Serve based AIM (FCFS-AIM), with Longest-Queue-First (LQF-AIM) policy and the signal control based on the Webster’s method (Signal) as benchmarks. Experimental results show that the sequential decisions from DCL-AIM outperform the other control policies.
Bullet‐screen comments (BSCs), a type of novel user‐generated content for online videos, have been rapidly adopted in recent years. Previous research has focused on consumers' responses to the ...presence and quantity of BSCs but overlooked their contents. We examine how one characteristic feature of BSCs' content—lexical diversity—affects users' payments. A large‐scale real‐world behavioral data set analysis and three lab studies show that high (vs. low) lexical diversity of BSCs increases viewers' payments in online video streaming contexts (e.g., online videos and live streaming). We further reveal that the positive effect of BSC diversity on payment is mediated by perceived social presence and information richness. We also demonstrate the moderating role of viewers' BSC usage level (heavy vs. light), such that the effect of BSC diversity on payment is significant for heavy BSC users, but diminishes for light users.
This paper applies the Lotka–Volterra model to investigate the competitive interactions among energy, environment, and economy (3Es) in the U.S. The proposed LV-COMSUD (Lotka–Volterra COmpetition ...Model for SUstainable Development) has satisfactory performance for model fitting and provides a useful multivariate framework to predict outcomes concerning these interactions. Our key findings include a pure competition between emissions and GDP (Gross Domestic Product), neutralisms between renewable and fossil/nuclear energy, and commensalisms between GDP and renewable/fossil energy and between nuclear energy and fossil energy/emissions. These results indicate that renewable/fossil energy use contributes to GDP and interacts indirectly with emissions, that an environmental Kuznets curve exists, and that the amount of produced nuclear energy correlates with emission. The U.S. is dependent on non-clean energy sources and its energy efficiency has room for improvement. The results provide unique insights for policy makers to craft up sustainable economic development plans. Overall, it is suggested that for developed markets such as the U.S., to enhance energy security and mitigate climate changes, improving energy efficiency and developing low-carbon clean energy should be top priorities.
•The competitive interactions among energy, environment, and economy are examined.•A pure competition between emissions and GDP exists and an EKC exists.•Energy use contributes to GDP and interacts indirectly with emissions.•Nuclear energy was used to tackle the growth of emissions/fossil energy use.•Improved energy efficiency is a viable policy to enhance energy security in U.S.
•We show that 0-ending prices are popular and rigid at convenience stores.•We use 3 datasets: two retail price datasets from the US, and CPI data from Israel.•Existing explanations rely on ...transaction convenience 0-ending prices offer.•We argue and show that cognitive convenience is relevant and important as well.•We show that cognitive convenience of 0-ending prices leads to higher demand.
We assess the role of cognitive convenience in the popularity and rigidity of 0-ending prices in convenience settings. Studies show that 0-ending prices are common at convenience stores because of the transaction convenience that 0-ending prices offer. Using large store-level retail CPI data, we find that 0-ending prices are popular and rigid at convenience stores even when they offer little transaction convenience. We corroborate these findings with two large retail scanner price datasets from Dominick's and Nielsen. In Dominick's data, we find that there are more 0-endings in the prices of the items in the front-end candies category than in any other category, even though these prices do not affect the convenience of the consumers' check-out transaction. In addition, in both Dominick's and Nielsen's datasets, we find that 0-ending prices have a positive effect on demand. Ruling out consumer antagonism and retailers’ use of heuristics in pricing, we conclude that 0-ending prices are popular and rigid, and that they increase demand in convenience settings, not only for their transaction convenience but also for the cognitive convenience they offer.
Abstract
Consumers often make decisions for multiple‐others when they do not know each one's true preferences. Under such circumstances, we demonstrate perceptions of enhanced preference ...heterogeneity for multiple‐others, relative to the perceived preference of single‐others. As a result, choices for multiple‐others are more diversified than those for single‐others. We attribute this effect to the perceived uniqueness of others in the multiple‐other setting. Notably, when others are perceived as particularly unique, the inclination toward over‐diversification intensifies. However, this diversification often leads to choices that do not align with the true preferences of the individuals, causing potential mismatches in demand and supply. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of these findings for managers and suggest avenues for future research.
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