Shopping Context and Consumers' Mental Representation of Complex Shopping Trip Decision Problems

Depending on the shopping context, consumers may develop different mental representations of complex shopping trip decision problems to help them interpret the decision situation that they face and evaluate alternative courses of action. To investigate these mental representations and how they vary across contexts, the authors propose a causal network structure that allows for a formal representation of how context-specific benefits requirements affect consumers’ evaluation of decision alternative attributes. They empirically test hypotheses derived from the framework, using data on consumers’ mental representations of a complex shopping trip decision problem across four shopping contexts that differ in terms of opening hour restrictions and shopping purpose, and find support for the proposed structure and hypotheses.retailing;consumer decision-making;context effects;mental representations;shopping trip decisions

Automated mixed traffic vehicle control and scheduling study

The operation and the expected performance of a proposed automatic guideway transit system which uses low speed automated mixed traffic vehicles (AMTVs) were analyzed. Vehicle scheduling and headway control policies were evaluated with a transit system simulation model. The effect of mixed traffic interference on the average vehicle speed was examined with a vehicle pedestrian interface model. Control parameters regulating vehicle speed were evaluated for safe stopping and passenger comfort. Some preliminary data on the cost and operation of an experimental AMTV system are included. These data were the result of a separate task conducted at JPL, and were included as background information

An analysis of short haul air passenger demand, volume 2

Several demand models for short haul air travel are proposed and calibrated on pooled data. The models are designed to predict demand and analyze some of the motivating phenomena behind demand generation. In particular, an attempt is made to include the effects of competing modes and of alternate destinations. The results support three conclusions: (1) the auto mode is the air mode's major competitor; (2) trip time is an overriding factor in intermodal competition, with air fare at its present level appearing unimportant to the typical short haul air traveler; and (3) distance appears to underly several demand generating phenomena, and therefore, must be considered very carefully to any intercity demand model. It may be the cause of the wide range of fare elasticities reported by researchers over the past 15 years. A behavioral demand model is proposed and calibrated. It combines the travel generating effects of income and population, the effects of modal split, the sensitivity of travel to price and time, and the effect of alternative destinations satisfying the trip purpose

Single-machine scheduling with stepwise tardiness costs and release times

We study a scheduling problem that belongs to the yard operations component of the railroad planning problems, namely the hump sequencing problem. The scheduling problem is characterized as a single-machine problem with stepwise tardiness cost objectives. This is a new scheduling criterion which is also relevant in the context of traditional machine scheduling problems. We produce complexity results that characterize some cases of the problem as pseudo-polynomially solvable. For the difficult-to-solve cases of the problem, we develop mathematical programming formulations, and propose heuristic algorithms. We test the formulations and heuristic algorithms on randomly generated single-machine scheduling problems and real-life datasets for the hump sequencing problem. Our experiments show promising results for both sets of problems

Analysis of Small Airports within a One Hundred and Twenty Mile Radius of Medium and/or Large Airports

The purpose of this research is to investigate how income, population age, scheduled air carrier services, and distance between competing airports impact annual scheduled passenger enplanements for airports in smaller communities. Small airports located within a 120 miles radius of larger sized (medium or large) airports are considered to be within the shadow of larger airports with which they must compete for passenger enplanements. Two methods were employed to evaluate shadow airports within a 120 mile radius of larger airports. First, an historical view, analyzing each of the airports with regard to schedule passenger enplanements, median disposable incomes, median ages, and distances between competing air passenger cities was completed. Comparisons were done over a 13 year period from 1980 to 1993 and an average annual growth rate was computed for all the airports dependent and independent variables. The next step was to pinpoint those small airports experiencing declining enplanements. Following this process, eight airports were singled out with declining trends. Six of the eight airports were found to be within an hour\u27s driving time of a larger airport. The remaining two were nearer to a two hour drive. Notably, the southeastern region of the United States accounted for half of the shadow airports experiencing declines. Also of significance, when comparing all other shadow airports to these declining airports revealed that the overall group grew 2 1/2 times faster than the eight cited. Additionally, their competing large airport counterparts when compared to their larger airport overall peer group grew twice as fast, suggesting that market share is being transferred from the shadow airports to their nearby competing airports. Second, a double log multiple regression model was developed. The final results suggest that this model\u27s independent variables account for 12.45% of the enplanements at the small/shadow airports. The outcome indicated that these independent variables—median disposable income, median age, and distance between air passenger cities were statistically significant at 95% and support the null hypothesis which states that there is a relationship between small air passenger city\u27s median disposable income, median population age, competing airports scheduled passenger enplanements, and distance from small air passenger city to the larger air passenger city. The independent variable, enplanements at the larger airport, was not as strong statistically and fell within a confidence level of 88%. Enplanements at the large hub were included in an attempt to measure the impact of increasing growth at the large airports on its smaller competitors

Shopping Context and Consumers' Mental Representation of Complex Shopping Trip Decision Problems

Depending on the shopping context, consumers may develop different mental representations of complex shopping trip decision problems to help them interpret the decision situation that they face and evaluate alternative courses of action. To investigate these mental representations and how they vary across contexts, the authors propose a causal network structure that allows for a formal representation of how context-specific benefits requirements affect consumers’ evaluation of decision alternative attributes. They empirically test hypotheses derived from the framework, using data on consumers’ mental representations of a complex shopping trip decision problem across four shopping contexts that differ in terms of opening hour restrictions and shopping purpose, and find support for the proposed structure and hypotheses

Modeling Airline Frequency Competition for Airport Congestion Mitigation

Demand often exceeds capacity at congested airports. Airline frequency competition is partially responsible for the growing demand for airport resources. We propose a game-theoretic model for airline frequency competition under slot constraints. The model is solved to obtain a Nash equilibrium using a successive optimizations approach, wherein individual optimizations are performed using a dynamic programming-based technique. The model predictions are validated against actual frequency data, with the results indicating a close fit to reality. We use the model to evaluate different strategic slot allocation schemes from the perspectives of the airlines and the passengers. The most significant result of this research shows that a small reduction in the total number of allocated slots translates into a substantial reduction in flight and passenger delays and also a considerable improvement in airlines' profits