NeuroEconomics

Over the last two years a research field has developed under the banner of 'neuroeconomics' in which recent neuroscientific methods are deploid to analyze economically relevant processes. This paper aims to provide an overview of the methodology and current state of neuroeconomic research by giving a brief definition of the concept of neuroeconomics, outlining relevant methodologies, and describing studies undertaken in the current research areas to date. Finally, some future prospects are considered.

Knowledge Management in Knowledge Intensive Service Networks: A Strategic Management Perspective

Knowledge is the key to gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Driven by a change in consumer needs towards “comprehensive service solutions”, more and more services are offered through networks. By so doing, individual firms can concentrate on their distinctive competencies and by combining these with those of partner firms such a network is able to offer complex, knowledge-intensive services at high quality and at reasonable prices. It is clear that the success of such knowledge intensive service networks depends strongly on the effective and efficient combination and use of the distinctive competencies of the network partners. That ability to combine and use distinctive competencies represents the core competency of the network as a whole. Understanding knowledge as a key resource for those distinctive competencies the combination problem can be seen as a knowledge management problem. The main contribution of this paper is to analyze knowledge management in service networks. We use a strategic management approach instead of a more technology-oriented approach since we believe that managerial problems still remain after technological problems have been solved. Therefore the question arises how to guarantee an effective and efficient combination and utilization of the distributed knowledge in knowledge-intensive service networks. The objective of this paper is to analyze the problems concerning the management of knowledge in service networks. It outlines possible solutions for these knowledge management problems in order to provide sustaining competitive advantage for the network as a whole.knowledge management, networks, knowledge-intensive services

Self-management interventions in patients with long-term conditions: a structured review of approaches to reporting inclusion, assessment, and outcomes in multimorbidity

Background: Multimorbidity has many potential implications for healthcare delivery, but a particularly important impact concerns the validity of trial evidence underpinning clinical guidelines for individual conditions. Objective: To review how authors of published trials of self-management interventions reported inclusion criteria, sample descriptions, and consideration of the impact of multimorbidity on trial outcomes. Methods: We restricted our analysis to a small number of exemplar long-term conditions: type 2 diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. We focussed our search on published Cochrane reviews. Data were extracted from the trials on inclusion/exclusion, sample description, and impact on outcomes. Results: Eleven reviews consisting of 164 unique trials were identified. Sixty percent of trials reported excluding patients with forms of multimorbidity. Reasons for exclusion were poorly described or defined. Reporting of multimorbidity within the trials was poor, with only 35% of trials reporting on multimorbidity in their patient samples. Secondary analyses, exploring the impact of multimorbidity, were very rare. Conclusions: The importance of multimorbidity in trials is only going to become more important over time, but trials often exclude patients with multimorbidity, and reporting of multimorbidity in trials including such patients is generally poor. This limits judgements about the external validity of the results for clinical populations. A consistent approach to the conduct and reporting of secondary analyses of the effects of multimorbidity on outcomes, using current best-practice guidance, could lead to a rapid development of the evidence base. Journal of Comorbidity 2014;4(1):37–4

Neural correlates of the affect heuristic during brand choice

In this working paper it is investigated how affect and cognition interact in consumer decision making. The research framework is multidisciplinary by applying a neuroscientific method to answer the question which information is processed during brand choice immediately when the decision is computed in the test person’s brain. In a neuroscientific experiment test persons perform binary decision-making tasks between different brands of the same product class. The results suggest that the presence of the respondent’s first choice brand leads to a specific modulation of the neural brain activity, which can be described as neural correlate of Slovic’s affect heuristic concept.Neuroeconomics, brand choice, cognition, affect

Consequences of User Manipulation through Dark Patterns

With increasing competition in the online market, companies frequently apply “dark patterns” to steer user behavior in ways that benefit the company but may harm the user. To date, consequences of dark patterns use are rather unknown. Prior research demonstrated positive effects (e.g., an increase in acceptance rates) and negative effects (e.g., negative emotions) of dark patterns use. To explain these contradictory effects, we draw in information manipulation theory. In a survey experiment we confronted participants with the dark patterns scarcity and sneaking. The results indicate that exposure to dark patterns increases perceived violations of communication maxims, which increase perceived user manipulation. This, in turn, reduces attitude toward the website and website design. Further, the results show that perceived user manipulation is significantly higher for users with low familiarity with online shopping. We plan to validate the findings in a field experiment to be conducted in the near future

Trusting Humans and Avatars: Behavioral and Neural Evidence

Over the past decade, information technology has dramatically changed the context in which economic transactions take place. Increasingly, transactions are computer-mediated, so that, relative to human-human interactions, human-computer interactions are gaining in relevance. Computer-mediated transactions, and in particular those related to the Internet, increase perceptions of uncertainty. Therefore, trust becomes a crucial factor in the reduction of these perceptions. To investigate this important construct, we studied individual trust behavior and the underlying brain mechanisms through a multi-round trust game. Participants acted in the role of an investor, playing against both humans and avatars. The behavioral results show that participants trusted avatars to a similar degree as they trusted humans. Participants also revealed similarity in learning an interaction partner’s trustworthiness, independent of whether the partner was human or avatar. However, the neuroimaging findings revealed differential responses within the brain network that is associated with theory of mind (mentalizing) depending on the interaction partner. Based on these results, the major conclusion of our study is that, in a situation of a computer with human-like characteristics (avatar), trust behavior in human-computer interaction resembles that of human-human interaction. On a deeper neurobiological level, our study reveals that thinking about an interaction partner’s trustworthiness activates the mentalizing network more strongly if the trustee is a human rather than an avatar. We discuss implications of these findings for future research

How Consumer Impulsiveness Moderates Online Trustworthiness Evaluations: Neurophysiological Insights

With the emergence of new technologies, in particular the Internet, the opportunity for impulsive purchases have expanded enormously. In this research-in-progress, we report the current status of an fMRI-project in which we investigated differences between neural processes in the brains of impulsive and non-impulsive shoppers during the trustworthiness evaluation of online offers. Both our behavioral and fMRI data provide evidence that the impulsiveness of individuals can exert significant influence on the evaluation of online offers, and can potentially affect subsequent purchase behavior. We show that impulsive individuals evaluate trustworthy and untrustworthy offers differently than do non-impulsive individuals. With respect to brain activation, both experimental groups (i.e., impulsive, non-impulsive) exhibit similar neural activation tendencies, but differences exist in the magnitude of activation patterns in brain regions that are closely related to trust and decision making, such as the DLPFC, the insula cortex, and the caudate nucleus

Neuroökonomie und Neuromarketing: Neurale Korrelate strategischer Entscheidungen

Die Bedeutung von Emotionen und Affekten bei ökonomischen Entscheidungen wird seit mehreren Jahren in der ökonomischen Literatur diskutiert (z. B. Rabin, 1998). Eine Erklärung der empirischen Evidenz in diesem Bereich, die über eine bloß phänomenologische Ebene hinausgeht, verlangt eine Grenzüberschreitung zu benachbarten Wissenschaftsgebieten wie der Individual- oder Sozial-Psychologie, der Anthropologie oder der Soziologie - und neuerdings auch der Neurobiologie und - physiologie. War eine exakte Messung und Analyse der Hirnaktivitäten bis vor wenigen Jahren fast ausschließlich auf EEG-gestützte oder -verwandte Methoden angewiesen, so hat sich durch die technische Entwicklung der (funktionellen) Magnetresonanztomographie bzw. Kernspintomographie in jüngster Zeit ein weites Anwendungsfeld in anderen Wissenschaftsgebieten ergeben, gerade für die (Mikro)Ökonomik. In diesem Beitrag soll der Leser über den state of the art in der Neuroökonomie und ihren Anwendungs-Teilbereichen, vor allem dem Neuromarketing, in komprimierter Form informiert werden. In Abschnitt 2 werden die Fragestellungen und grundsätzliche Herangehensweise der Neuroökonomik skizziert, Abschnitt 3 stellt kurz den aktuellen Stand der Mess- und Analysemethoden der medizinischen Gehirnforschung vor, und Abschnitt 4 beschreibt den Stand zur Frage der Lokalisierung von zentralen Funktionen im menschlichen Gehirn. Die ökonomischen Anwendungen findet der Leser in Abschnitt 5, der einen Überblick über den state of the art neuroökonomischer Untersuchungen in der wirtschafts- und neurowissenschaftlichen Literatur gibt, sowie in Abschnitt 6, in dem das Neuromarketing als wissenschaftliches und kommerzielles Anwendungsfeld der Neuroökonomik behandelt wird. Die Abschnitte 7 und 8 schließlich geben nach einer kurzen Diskussion der ethischen Problematik neurowissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen einen Ausblick auf mögliche Forschungsfelder der Neuroökonomik in der näheren Zukunft sowie den Versuch einer Einschätzung der Relevanz des neurowissenschaftlichen Ansatzes in der Ökonomik. --Neurökonomie,Neurowissenschaften,Neuromarketing

Satisfaction with complaint handling:a replication study on its determinants in a business-to-business context

Research on the drivers of satisfaction with complaint handling (SATCOM) underlines the importance of procedural, relational, and interactional justice (Orsingher, Valentini, & de Angelis, 2010). Since these SATCOM-studies are largely conducted in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets, it is unclear what drives SATCOM in business-to-business (B2B) markets. Therefore, we replicate the justice model in an industrial context and find significant differences for procedural justice and interactional justice but not for distributive justice. While distributive justice is equally important in both contexts, procedural justice is more important in B2B markets whereas interactional justice drives SATCOM only in B2C markets

Users\u27 Trust Building Processes During Their Initial Connecting Behavior in Social Networks: Behavioral and Neural Evidence

Social networking sites (SNSs) are a ubiquitous phenomenon in today’s society and their economic and social impact is high. However, despite the fact that many SNSs provide increasingly more system features to boost social networking, there is also an increasing concern about trust. Users’ trust is important for a long-term oriented and successful SNS, based on a lively connecting behavior in SNSs. Nevertheless, so far only a limited number of studies investigated users’ trust perceptions that are an important antecedent of connecting behavior in SNSs. We conducted a behavioral study, as well as a brain imaging experiment, to explore trustworthiness judgments in SNSs in order to better understand how pictures and textual information influence users’ initial connecting behavior. Preliminary results of this research-in-progress paper show that both pictures and textual information have strong influence on trustworthiness judgments, and these judgments are processed differently in the users’ brains