Peter E. Earl

The Elgar Companion to Consumer Research and Economic Psychology

This major reference book provides an authoritative analysis and survey of consumer research and economic psychology. It provides an international, in-depth overview of the present state of knowledge and theory which will be indispensable to students, researchers and practitioners. The Companion presents over 100 specially commissioned entries on important topics in consumer research and economic psychology from behaviourism and brand loyalty to trust and the psychology of tourism.

Simon's travel theorem and the demand for live music

This paper extends Herbert Simons Travel Theorem to the market for live music. It is also designed to provoke interest in using the method of subjective personal introspection in economic analysis. Music is a structured flow of information and is readily stored for flexible and convenient use. Live music performances involve many costs that can be avoided by listening to recorded music, yet a significant market for live music still exists. Subjective personal introspection is used here to identify characteristics of live music performances that cannot be offered by recordings. Particular attention is given to psychological, social and ritualistic aspects, and to different opportunities for risk taking and risk management that the two modes of consumption present.

THE ENTREPRENEUR AS A CONSTRUCTOR OF CONNECTIONS

This paper attempts to recast the entrepreneur by synthesizing ideas from personal construct psychology and systems-based evolutionary economics. It retains an Austrian subjectivist emphasis but focuses on rapid product innovation rather than arbitrage. Profit opportunities are mental constructs that link products and revenue streams. Entrepreneurs develop new products by forming novel connections between existing product elements and diverse technologies, mindful of the connections between these products and the complex structures of consumer lifestyles. These linkages are often formed in the context of large multi-product firms, as well as being the basis of new enterprises, so entrepreneurship overlaps with strategic management.

Fashion, growth and welfare: an evolutionary approach

The task of this paper is to explore the interplay between fashion, consumer lifestyles and economic growth in the context of a world of technological change in which the menu of possibilities that consumers face is constantly changing and tending to increase in length. Our working definition of ‘fashion’ is simple, namely the tendency or behavioural norm of actors to adopt certain types or styles of customs or commodities nearly simultaneously, only to adopt a different type or style of custom or commodity in future periods. The demand spikes associated with fashion may pertain to newly introduced products or to products that have been around for some time; they may also occur in hybrid cases where a seemingly defunct product or genre is given a brief rebirth by being reincarnated in terms of a new technology.

The Mind and Method of the Economist: A Critical Appraisal of Major Economists in the Twentieth Century.

This major book comprises amongst other essays critical appraisals of major economists including Alfred Marshall, Joan Robinson, G.B. Richardson, W.J. Baumol, Frank Hahn and Herbert Simon and of Austrian economics and diverse approaches to co-ordination failure in macroeconomics.

Brands of Economics and the Trojan Horse of Pluralism

This paper examines the current status and prospects of heterodox approaches to economics in relation to the problem of marketing ideas to groups of potential users who see the world in very different ways. It draws lessons from the changing status of behavioural economics and highlights the marketing problems that arise between heterodox economists whose perspectives overlap only partially. Its principal message is that the best hope for heterodox economics may lie in taking a less openly combative approach than hitherto when trying to win over mainstream economists and instead using strategies of stealth based on the empirical advantages of pluralistic applied research methods.

Information, coordination and macroeconomics

Abstract This paper argues a case for refocusing research in macroeconomics in the light of information-related work by Katona (on the impact of consumer confidence on savings behaviour), G.B. Richardson (on the coordination of investment decisions) and Minsky (on speculation, layered financial intermediation and instability). It discusses also the informational origins of liquidity preference, problems caused by transactions chains that link trade in secondhand goods with activity levels in new goods markets, and the importance of institutional arrangements and the decomposability of the matrix of microeconomic interactions for shaping the severity of macroeconomic problems when coordination difficulties arise.

The Competitive Process in the Age of the Internet

Abstract This paper examines some of the impacts of the widespread adoption and use of the Internet in advanced countries on business, consumers and the media. It is argued that while capital costs of entry into Internet‐based businesses may be very low, this does not guarantee that markets in which such firms operate will necessarily be hotly contested, for success may require substantial sunk costs to be incurred in development. It explores the changing nature of market institutions associated with the rise of e‐commerce (including the advent of what are labelled ‘portal’ firms) and associated changes in the division of labour between buyers, sellers and intermediaries. The authors provide behavioural, evolutionary, and information theoretic perspectives on these dynamic issues.

Consumer X-inefficiency and the problem of market regulation

Holden 2005), but rather a brilliant evolutionary economist struggling to escape. My point is that the non-allocative concept of X-efficiency only makes consistent analytical sense in an evolutionary and complex systems theory-based evolutionary framework, and, moreover, implies the existence of a companion concept: X-efficacy. X-efficiency is about the economics of what you do when you know what you’re doing: X-efficacy is the economics of how you know what you’re doing in the first place. Unpack the difference between allocative and non-allocative efficiency and you arrive at the distinction between X-efficiency and X-efficacy. Leibenstein first explained the difference between allocative and non-allocative (i.e. X-) efficiency in 1966 in the

Conjectures about future wants: some insights from evolutionary economics with reference to digital photography

Inappropriate conjectures of how customers will see new products can result in poor sales when strategists venture into uncharted territory. Here we try to show how evolutionary economics, broadly defined, can help managers make better conjectures. We first examine the implications of consumers choosing to buy products on the basis of hierarchical checklists for product characteristics rather than making trade-offs between characteristics in the manner often assumed. We then examine how strategic myopia and a misunderstanding of the role of product standards can arise because managers are blinkered in their understanding of the context in which consumers make choices and use products. When firms move from a product based on one technology to a product based on a new one, the role of product standards may change completely. Our analysis is illustrated throughout with examples, with special attention paid to the case of Kodak and the development of digital photography.