Consumer Behavior - Publications - Faculty & Research

November 23, 2022
Article

The Sinister Logic of Hidden Online Fees

By: Michael Luca

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Price

01 Dec 2015
News

Faculty Q&A: The Price Is Right

What intrigued you about the pay-what-you-want (PWYW) model? It’s very unusual for a firm or a seller to completely relinquish pricing power to their customers. Typically consumers encounter a price, and then they decide whether or not... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

01 Sep 2012
News

Ideas in Action

shoppers deliberating over a luxury goods purchase. “Marketers can convince consumers that buying their product is actually a farsighted behavior,” she observes. “In that sense, consumers are investing in... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons;Julia Hanna;Roger Thompson; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

28 Sep 2020
Working Paper Summaries

What Can Economics Say About Alzheimer's Disease?

Keywords: by Amitabh Chandra, Courtney Coile, and Corina Mommaerts; Health; Pharmaceutical

December 18, 2023
Article

Are Everywhere Stores the New Face of Retail?

By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

Historically, customer engagement and product fulfillment occurred in the same place — a traditional retail store. But today, retailers are beginning to explore how they can create opportunities for customers to engage with products in native environments. A related... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Consumer Behavior; Distribution; Logistics; Retail Industry

Citation

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01 Dec 2016
News

Research Brief: So Many Sites, So Little Time

Shane Greenstein (photo by Russ Campbell) Shane Greenstein (photo by Russ Campbell) Understanding how people spend their time online is essential for any organization hoping to capture and keep consumer eyeballs—yet what we know about... View Details

24 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

Want People to Save More? Send a Text

weight loss, work-out routines, or disease management to environmentally friendly behavior or reaching goals at work, Pomeranz says. "Any area of regular activity for which people tend to procrastinate is where it could work." View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard

2021
Working Paper

Closing Costs, Refinancing, and Inefficiencies in the Mortgage Market

By: David Hao Zhang

In the US, borrowers often finance the price of mortgage origination by agreeing to higher mortgage rates for a given principal amount. I show that for standard fixed-rate, prepayable mortgages this contractual feature has two consequences. First, it leads to increased... View Details

Keywords: Mortgage Market; Refinancing; Mortgages; Consumer Behavior

Citation

November–December 2020
Article

Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency

By: Bhavya Mohan, Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Firms do not typically disclose information on their costs to produce a good to consumers. However, we provide evidence of when and why doing so can increase consumers’ purchase interest. Specifically, building on the psychology of disclosure and trust, we posit that... View Details

Keywords: Cost Transparency; Disclosure; Field Experiment; Cost; Trust; Consumer Behavior

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11 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

A Smarter Way to Reduce Customer Defections

Companies spend significant sums to acquire customers. Once hooked, marketers protect those investments by attempting to keep patrons happy, engaged, and most of all, loyal. Reducing customer attrition, or "churn" in marketing parlance, often involves offering... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Service

January 1990 (Revised February 1993)
Case

Selling Durable Goods

Examines the pricing policy for a firm that is a monopoly supplier of a durable good. Lowering price over time in an attempt to increase market penetration seems desirable. But doing so may also cause some buyers to postpone their purchases. Describes these... View Details

Keywords: Price; Consumer Behavior; Monopoly

Citation

Educators

Purchase

October 2003 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Cape Wind

By: John T. Gourville and Kerry Herman

Cape Wind has proposed placing a 170-tower wind farm, with each tower more than 400-feet tall, in Nantucket Sound. Not surprisingly, public reaction is mixed. Some view the wind farm as clean, renewable energy. Others view it as an eyesore and a desecration of a valued... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Renewable Energy; Consumer Behavior; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Behavior; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

01 Dec 2014
News

Forecasting ’15

the scenes for a while. Almost everyone I know in the food packaging and grocery industry is a health nut. People are becoming more aware of their health and have a growing desire to find a way to eat and feel better. That will change things in the industry.” View Details

Keywords: Food Services and Drinking Places; Hospitality; Ambulatory Health Care Services; Health, Social Assistance

September 2020
Article

Customer Supercharging in Experience-Centric Channels

By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

We conjecture that for online retailers, experience-centric offline store formats do not simply expand market coverage, but rather, serve to significantly amplify future positive customer behaviors, both online and offline. We term this phenomenon “supercharging” and... View Details

Keywords: Retail Operations; Marketing-operations Interface; Omnichannel Retailing; Experience Attributes; Quasi-experimental Methods; Operations; Internet and the Web; Marketing Channels; Consumer Behavior; Retail Industry

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July 2009
Article

Bad Riddance or Good Rubbish? Ownership and Not Loss Aversion Causes the Endowment Effect

By: C. K. Morewedge, L. L. Shu, D. T. Gilbert and T. D. Wilson

People typically demand more to relinquish the goods they own than they would be willing to pay to acquire those goods if they didn't already own them (the endowment effect). The standard economic explanation of this phenomenon is that people expect the pain of... View Details

Keywords: Value; Judgments; Consumer Behavior; Attitudes

Citation

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17 Jun 2016
Op-Ed

Companies Need to Start Marketing Security to Customers

good enough. The range of safety risks has expanded and consumers everywhere are trying new products and experiences they aren't familiar with. Marketers must do more to educate consumers about safe View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Entertainment & Recreation

05 Aug 2010
What Do You Think?

What Is Customer Opinion Good For?

or less important (because) customers had no sense when it came to entertaining tradeoffs (between features and cost)." Phil Clark commented that, regardless of method or purpose, "It is important to know your customers better than they know themselves They will tell... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Technology