Corina Paraschiv

Motivating Human–Agent Interaction: Transferring Insights from Behavioral Marketing to Interface Design

The understanding of consumer interaction with online EC Websites is one of the big current challenges for online marketers. The present paper investigates what drives and impedes Net customers to interact with a marketers websites and, more specifically, with decision support interface systems (DSISs) employed in these sites to assist users when shopping or searching for high-involvement consumer goods. DSIS are considered as a predecessor or partially already integrator of more elaborated agent systems that may be used in future EC environments. It is shown that the design of todays DSISs is sub-optimal for both marketers and consumers, because it fails to motivate user interaction. One reason for this might be that little effort has been made to transfer the insights from consumer behavior to the design of EC user interfaces. The current paper aims to address this gap by proposing a number of new DSIS design principles, all of which are based on insights from traditional marketing search- and perceived risk theory. The main contribution of this paper is that it proposes a design approach for EC Websites that intuitively “makes the user model available to the user” [Shneiderman and Maes, 36].

Experienced vs. Described Uncertainty: Do We Need Two Prospect Theory Specifications?

This paper reports on the results of an experimental elicitation at the individual level of all prospect theory components (i.e., utility, loss aversion, and weighting functions) in two decision contexts: situations where alternatives are described as probability distributions and situations where the decision maker must experience unknown probability distributions through sampling before choice. For description-based decisions, our results are fully consistent with prospect theorys empirical findings under risk. Furthermore, no significant differences are detected across contexts as regards utility and loss aversion. Whereas decision weights exhibit similar qualitative properties across contexts typically found under prospect theory, our data suggest that, for gains at least, the subjective treatment of uncertainty in experience-based and description-based decisions is significantly different. More specifically, we observe a less pronounced overweighting of small probabilities and a more pronounced underweighting of moderate and high probabilities for experience-based decisions. On the contrary, for losses, no significant differences were observed in the evaluation of prospects across contexts. This paper was accepted by George Wu, decision analysis.

Sellers' and Buyers' Reference Point Dynamics in the Housing Market

Building on behavioural research in economics, this paper examines reference points for sellers and for buyers in the housing market. Using experimental data, it is shown that, contrary to standard economic theory predictions, reference point dynamics can be influenced by market evolution and available information. More precisely, is it shown that the reference point depends on the seller/buyer role in the housing market, that past prices influence the reference point and that the reference point can be manipulated by information disclosure. The results are consistent with the theoretical implications of prospect theory and mental accounting.

Consumers’ perceived risk and hold and use of payment instruments

ABSTRACT Consumer decisions regarding retail payment instruments entail private and social costs. Due to these social costs, policymakers are increasingly trying to understand the determinants of consumer payment choices as documented by the European Central Bank’s regular publications. This article contributes to this understanding by investigating the role of perceived risk. Based on an original survey of French consumers, we measure the effects of perceived risk on the decisions to hold and use the main retail payment instruments: cash, card and cheque. We point to the sequential dependence of the decisions to hold and use a payment instrument, and study jointly both decisions. The bivariate analysis based on risk factors shows that unavailability risk and time risk have the greatest transverse influence on holding and using payment instruments. Our results, robust to controlling for consumer characteristics, confirm their propensity for a quick-to-use and constantly available payment instrument. We discuss the relevance of our results for policy making purposes.

Dynamic Pricing in Management Science

This paper presents a review of the literature on dynamic pricing models in management science. We discuss monopolistic and competitive situations, with an emphasis on applications in different contexts. We also describe the main development perspectives of this literature.

Loss Aversion: Origin, Components and Marketing Implications

Loss aversion accounts for negative changes having a higher psychological impact than positive changes. Our paper reviews existing marketing literature on loss aversion and suggests directions for future research. We distinguish four dimensions of loss aversion — neural, cognitive, affective and conative — and identify socio-demographic characteristics, product characteristics and exchange conditions as three main groups of loss aversion moderators. We formulate strategic recommendations for marketers based on consumer loss aversion.

Deciding about human lives: an experimental measure of risk attitudes under prospect theory

For public policies in the health, security or safety domains, the main consequences concern the number of human lives that are saved or lost, and are uncertain ex-ante. In classic economic evaluations of such policies, losses and gains of human lives are often monetized and aggregated with other costs and benefits. Uncertainty about human lives is thus treated as uncertainty about monetary consequences. In this paper, we question whether people risk human lives as they risk money. We present an experiment comparing risk attitudes towards human lives and towards money under prospect theory. The results show that respondents treat the two attributes differently when losses are involved. Specifically, the decisions involving human lives are characterized by less elevated probability weighting in the loss domain and higher loss aversion compared to decisions involving money. These findings suggest that public preferences may differ from the cost-benefit analysis recommendations.

Tarification dynamique en ligne et éthicalité perçue par le consommateur : synthèse et voies de recherche:

A l’ère du Big data, les stratégies de tarification des sites marchands évoluent vers une tarification dynamique en ligne qui consiste à modifier régulièrement le prix des biens et des services commercialisés afin de maximiser les ventes et les profits. Cette stratégie soulève des questionnements éthiques du fait que les consommateurs payent des prix différents pour le même produit. L’objectif de notre article est d’examiner, du point de vue du consommateur, les enjeux éthiques de la tarification dynamique en ligne. Nous proposons un cadre conceptuel et un agenda de recherche future autour de l’éthicalité perçue par le consommateur relative à cette stratégie.

Online dynamic pricing and consumer-perceived ethicality: Synthesis and future research

In the era of Big Data, online retailers’ pricing strategies are evolving towards an online dynamic pricing system, which consists in frequent modifications of the prices of goods and services in order to maximize sales and profits. This strategy raises important ethical questions, because consumers end up paying different prices for the same product. The aim of our article is to examine, from the consumer’s point of view, the ethical issues raised by online dynamic pricing. We propose a conceptual framework and a future research agenda with regard to consumers’ perceived ethicality about this strategy.

Increasing consumer well-being: risk as potential driver of happiness

ABSTRACT This article investigates the relation between risk and individual well-being. We propose a theoretical model of happiness that makes a distinction between ex ante evaluations of happiness and ex post assessments. The main assumptions of the model are tested through three studies based on anchoring vignettes. We show that, even if, ex ante, consumers fear high risk and do not associate it to a high level of happiness, their ex post evaluation of well-being is generally higher when identical consequences result from a high-risk situation than from a low-risk situation. Control over risk-taking reinforces the gap between ex ante and ex post measures of happiness. Thus, our article provides empirical evidence about a positive relation between risk and individual well-being, suggesting that risky experiences have the potential to increase consumer well-being.