Eloise Coupey

Understanding contingent choice: a computer simulation approach

It is pointed on that, when making choices, people use a variety of information processing strategies, contingent upon a number of task and context variables. An approach to investigating contingent decision behavior using an effort/accuracy framework, production system modeling of decision strategies, and Monte Carlo simulation to explore the interactions of task properties with decision heuristics (strategies) is illustrated. The simulation results suggest that the contingent use of choice heuristics may often yield relatively high levels of decision accuracy with substantial savings in effort. Also presented is a discussion of how the use of heuristics may vary during the course of the decision episode as the structure of the task is learned. In addition, ways to opportunistically exploit the task structure to simplify processing while still producing good decisions are identified. >

Consumer Behavior and Unresolved Regulatory Issues in Electronic Marketing

Abstract Interactive media such as the World Wide Web are increasingly popular venues for marketers. These media differ from traditional forms of making information, products, and services available to consumers, thus creating potential regulatory issues. Before regulation can be determined and imposed, knowledge of how consumer behavior will be affected by the new media should be obtained. We discuss several theoretical issues in consumer behavior to illustrate potential effects of interactive media on decision-making, and we relate these effects to the potential issues created for marketers and policy makers.

An Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Design Course for Wearable and Pervasive Computing Products

This paper reports on a design experience for undergraduates in computer engineering, industrial design, and marketing that focuses on pervasive computing devices. Across a broad range of targeted application areas and user groups, many of the student designs have been wearable computers. Consequently, our course will be of interest to the wearable computing community, particularly in terms of our aim of bridging the gap between design and engineering. For the two most recent offerings of the course, we have utilized external observers and surveyed the students in order to validate the impact of aspects of our process and changes to it. This paper presents an overview of our process with both qualitative and quantitative results from these two most recent offerings.

An Interdisciplinary Design Course for Pervasive Computing

Virginia Tech offers an interdisciplinary design course for pervasive computing products, with the goal of providing undergraduates with the interdisciplinary and technical skills required to design and develop pervasive computing devices. The course has been developed and taught by a team of faculty from three departments-Electrical and Computer Engineering, Industrial Design, and Marketing-and a faculty member from the Department of Engineering Education has helped develop the classs interdisciplinary teaming processes.

Direct Mapping of Consumer Perceptions

Traditional perceptual mapping techniques such as factor analysis and multidimensional scaling do not directly involve the consumer in determining the number of dimensions, naming the dimensions or locating brands along the dimensions. This paper describes Direct Perceptual Mapping (DPM), a technique with which perceptual maps are elicited directly from the consumer. Results show that DPM compares favorably with traditional techniques in producing perceptual maps. In addition, DPM can provide process data that are not available with traditional techniques.

Artists as cultural icons: the icon myth transfer effect as a heuristic for cultural branding

Communicating the national values of artists and the role of product benefits as symbols of national values, infuse iconic national brands. This paper aims to validate a conceptual framework that offers empirical insights for cultural identity that drives brand management.,Case studies and cross-cultural focus group research establish the present study’s conceptual framework for cultural branding.,Brand awareness of a perfume named after a Cuban dancer and a spirit named for a Chilean poet, reflect authentic emblems of national identity. Informants’ behavior confirms the study’s model of icon myth transfer effect as a heuristic for cultural branding with clear, detailed and unprompted references to the myths and brands behind these heroines.,The study’s ethnography shows how artists reflect myth and folklore in iconic brands. Future research should assess whether the icon myth transfer effect as a heuristic for cultural branding occurs with cultural icons beyond the arts and transcends national boundaries.,The study challenges conventional branding, where the brand is the myth, and the myth reflects the myth market. The authors show how the myth connects to a national identity yet exists independently of the brand. The branding strategy ties the brand to the existing myth, an alternative route for cultural branding mediated by the icon myth transfer effect.,These two Latin American brands provide a much-needed connection among the branding literatures and images surrounding gender and nationalism in lesser-known markets.,Most research explores iconic myths, brands and folklore in one country. This study extends cultural branding through social history and by testing a conceptual model that establishes how myths embody nation-specific values. Iconic myths are a heuristic for understanding and describing brands, revealing an unexamined path for cultural branding.