H. Onur Bodur

Understanding the role of preference revision and concession in group decisions

In this article, the authors contend that member influence in a groups decision could be decomposed into two distinct elements of preference revision and concession. Using a hierarchical Bayes model of dyadic decision making, the authors show that the degree of preference revision and concession varies across product attributes, individuals, and product categories. The authors demonstrate that converging preferences affect a members concession, which in turn affects members’ satisfaction with the joint decision. More important, a members satisfaction is higher when his or her concession is reciprocated.

Social responsibility and its differential effects on the retailers’ portfolio of private label brands

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how social responsibility initiatives can be integrated into different tiers of retailers’ private label brands (PLB) and introduces a conceptual model and opposing predictions building on research in social responsibility and evolutionary psychology. The empirical evidence from two studies suggests that retailers should consider the type of PLB (i.e. quality tier) in the introduction of social responsibility initiatives. Design/methodology/approach – To investigate opposing predictions, the authors conducted two experiments with presence of social responsibility initiative and PLB quality tier as the factors. The authors present the results from 168 Canadian consumers focussing on two product categories. Findings – The findings of two experiments are more consistent with an explanation based on resource synergy beliefs rather than costly signaling theory. Social responsibility initiatives enhanced consumer evaluations of high-quality PLBs, but hurt consum...

Prior knowledge of objects improves efficiency during hybrid visual search.

In our daily lives, visual search often involves looking for items that we have in memory, such as in the search for products to purchase in a supermarket. Previous work has shown that this type of search (termed Hybrid Visual Search) becomes less efficient - as assessed by increases in reaction time - as a function of set size of objects in the search array, and set size of the objects that are memorized. This previous work involved the memorization of random objects. But what would happen if participants already had prior knowledge of the object? For example, searching for a popular brand of cola among other products on a grocery shelf may be faster, as the participant already knows that the target object is red and white. This prior knowledge may therefore improve the efficiency of hybrid search. To test this hypothesis, we ran a hybrid visual search task on 100 participants for known North American brands, versus unknown European brands. Known and unknown brands were matched in terms of product category (i.e. each group of objects contained the same type of products). Brand knowledge (or lack thereof) was confirmed post-experiment via a questionnaire. We manipulated set size (4, 8, 16) for both items memorized, and for number of objects on the screen. All distractors were random objects. Similar to previous studies, we found set size effects for both items memorized, as well as the number of items on the screen for both known and unknown brands. Furthermore, we observed a statistically significant (p< .01) increase in reaction times across all set sizes for the unknown (versus known) objects. In addition, search slopes are steeper for unknown versus known objects. We therefore conclude that prior knowledge of items helps to make hybrid visual search more efficient. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.