No Pain No Gain: The Beneficial Role of Consumer Effort in Decision-Making

The overarching goal of this dissertation is to study the role of consumer effort within the context of online decision making. We show that consumer effort may not be necessarily malevolent and that some sources and measures of greater consumer effort can lead to beneficial outcomes. A better understanding of the role of consumer effort may help firms to evaluate their investments in reducing consumer effort and justify the cost associated with implementing such strategies. First, we suggest that user effort reduction can be beneficial when it concerns the size of the content of the information but not when it regards the involvement of users in the process of getting the information. These opposing effects can be attributed to the mediating role of content learning. Second, we use the complexity of the composition of the recommended choice set as a source of consumer effort and we propose that greater complexity (through increasing consumer effort) increases objective consumer knowledge due to greater required cognitive elaboration but decreases choice confidence and subjective product knowledge. We validate that these effects on product knowledge are managerially meaningful due to their positive effect on website conversion and consumer willingness to pay. In the third study, we examine the role of time as a measure of consumer effort in the context of online product recommendations. We distinguish between consumer inspection time-based effort at the choice set and at the product-level and suggest that whereas in the first case, inspection time decreases website conversion, at the product level, greater inspection time has the opposite effect due to the different antecedents. Accordingly we suggest improvements on the composition of the recommended choice sets in a way that the allocation of consumers’ time spent is effectively balanced

Don’t Take It Personally: The Effect of Explicit Targeting in Advertising Personalization

Firms increasingly use consumers’ information to personalize their communication. Personalized advertisements, targeted based on users’ past behavior, offer users relevant product information that fits their preferences. In this study, we investigate the implications of explicit targeting, making the underlying targeting mechanism explicit to consumers, and ad message framing, in terms of utilitarian or hedonic product benefits. In a large-scale field experiment in which we run a campaign for a mobile application, we show that explicit targeting reduces advertising effectiveness pointing towards increased consumer privacy concerns. While utilitarian ad messages reinforce the negative effect of explicit targeting, the use of hedonic ad messages alleviates such a negative effect. Our study contributes to IS literature on advertising personalization and the personalization privacy paradox. We provide practical insights for firms that can be used in the design and implementation of personalized advertising campaigns

Pediatric trauma and emergency surgery: an international cross-sectional survey among WSES members

Background: In contrast to adults, the situation for pediatric trauma care from an international point of view and the global management of severely injured children remain rather unclear. The current study investigates structural management of pediatric trauma in centers of different trauma levels as well as experiences with pediatric trauma management around the world. Methods: A web-survey had been distributed to the global mailing list of the World Society of Emergency Surgery from 10/2021-03/2022, investigating characteristics of respondents and affiliated hospitals, case-load of pediatric trauma patients, capacities and infrastructure for critical care in children, trauma team composition, clinical work-up and individual experiences with pediatric trauma management in response to patients´ age. The collaboration group was subdivided regarding sizes of affiliated hospitals to allow comparisons concerning hospital volumes. Comparable results were conducted to statistical analysis. Results: A total of 133 participants from 34 countries, i.e. 5 continents responded to the survey. They were most commonly affiliated with larger hospitals (> 500 beds in 72.9%) and with level I or II trauma centers (82.0%), respectively. 74.4% of hospitals offer unrestricted pediatric medical care, but only 63.2% and 42.9% of the participants had sufficient experiences with trauma care in children ≤ 10 and ≤ 5 years of age (p = 0.0014). This situation is aggravated in participants from smaller hospitals (p < 0.01). With regard to hospital size (≤ 500 versus > 500 in-hospital beds), larger hospitals were more likely affiliated with advanced trauma centers, more elaborated pediatric intensive care infrastructure (p < 0.0001), treated children at all ages more frequently (p = 0.0938) and have higher case-loads of severely injured children < 12 years of age (p = 0.0009). Therefore, the majority of larger hospitals reserve either pediatric surgery departments or board-certified pediatric surgeons (p < 0.0001) and in-hospital trauma management is conducted more multi-disciplinarily. However, the majority of respondents does not feel prepared for treatment of severe pediatric trauma and call for special educational and practical training courses (overall: 80.2% and 64.3%, respectively). Conclusions: Multi-professional management of pediatric trauma and individual experiences with severely injured children depend on volumes, level of trauma centers and infrastructure of the hospital. However, respondents from hospitals at all levels of trauma care complain about an alarming lack of knowledge on pediatric trauma management

Correction to: Two years later: Is the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic still having an impact on emergency surgery? An international cross-sectional survey among WSES members

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is still ongoing and a major challenge for health care services worldwide. In the first WSES COVID-19 emergency surgery survey, a strong negative impact on emergency surgery (ES) had been described already early in the pandemic situation. However, the knowledge is limited about current effects of the pandemic on patient flow through emergency rooms, daily routine and decision making in ES as well as their changes over time during the last two pandemic years. This second WSES COVID-19 emergency surgery survey investigates the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on ES during the course of the pandemic. Methods: A web survey had been distributed to medical specialists in ES during a four-week period from January 2022, investigating the impact of the pandemic on patients and septic diseases both requiring ES, structural problems due to the pandemic and time-to-intervention in ES routine. Results: 367 collaborators from 59 countries responded to the survey. The majority indicated that the pandemic still significantly impacts on treatment and outcome of surgical emergency patients (83.1% and 78.5%, respectively). As reasons, the collaborators reported decreased case load in ES (44.7%), but patients presenting with more prolonged and severe diseases, especially concerning perforated appendicitis (62.1%) and diverticulitis (57.5%). Otherwise, approximately 50% of the participants still observe a delay in time-to-intervention in ES compared with the situation before the pandemic. Relevant causes leading to enlarged time-to-intervention in ES during the pandemic are persistent problems with in-hospital logistics, lacks in medical staff as well as operating room and intensive care capacities during the pandemic. This leads not only to the need for triage or transferring of ES patients to other hospitals, reported by 64.0% and 48.8% of the collaborators, respectively, but also to paradigm shifts in treatment modalities to non-operative approaches reported by 67.3% of the participants, especially in uncomplicated appendicitis, cholecystitis and multiple-recurrent diverticulitis. Conclusions: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic still significantly impacts on care and outcome of patients in ES. Well-known problems with in-hospital logistics are not sufficiently resolved by now; however, medical staff shortages and reduced capacities have been dramatically aggravated over last two pandemic years

Variations On A Rating Scale: The Effect On Extreme Response Tendency In Product Ratings

Product ratings have become an integral element of online businesses especially for experience goods, yet seem to be prone to biases that shift most of the distribution towards the extreme points of the scales. Response biases due to inherent traits (such as acquiescence or extreme response style) are widely investigated in survey design and marketing research, yet little is known about how the rating scale variations in user generated product evaluations influence their formation. More precisely, in an experimental study in the context of movie ratings, I show that the use of emotional labels attracts us-ers to the endpoints of the rating scale but their responses are less susceptible to extreme response tendency when the size of the rating scale is increased. Also, simply priming the midpoint of the scale reduces extreme responses, though this effect is attenuated when emotional labels are used. Such ef-fects remain consistent when I account for response styles, cultural dimensions and individual charac-teristics. The broad use of product ratings in generating personalized recommendations and predict-ing market performance necessitates a discussion on how to better account for potential distortions in these ratings due to variations in the rating scale

Οι εκπαιδευτικοί μιλούν για μαθητές/μαθήτριες μέλη ΛΟΑΤΚΙ οικογενειών: η βιωμένη εμπειρία

Η διπλωματική εργασία ζητά να αναδείξει ζητήματα σχετικά με απόψεις, γνώσεις και στάσεις των εκπαιδευτικών για τα παιδιά ΛΟΑΤΚΙ οικογενειών. Τα τελευταία χρόνια η σύνθεση των σχολικών τάξεων γίνεται όλο και πιο ποικιλόμορφη ενώ ο χώρος της εκπαίδευσης αποτελεί πεδίο στο οποίο αναπτύσσονται δυναμικές όπου αναδεικνύονται ζητήματα συμπερίληψης που αφορούν και άτομα προερχόμενα από την ΛΟΑΤΚΙ κοινότητα (λεσβίες, ομοφυλόφιλοι, αμφισεξουαλικοί, τρανς, κουήρ, ίντερσεξ άτομα). Η παρούσα έρευνα έχει σκοπό να αποτυπώσει τις θέσεις, προθέσεις και ενέργειες των εκπαιδευτικών που διαδραματίζουν κεντρικό ρόλο στη δημιουργία ενός συμπεριληπτικού σχολείου. Εκτός από τη μετάδοση γνώσεων και την ανάπτυξη δεξιοτήτων είναι αναγκαία εκ μέρους των εκπαιδευτικών η διαμόρφωση ενός σχολικού κλίματος που δεν αποκλείει κανένα παιδί και η διαμόρφωση ενός συμπεριληπτικού εκπαιδευτικού περιβάλλοντος με στοιχεία αλληλοσεβασμού, εκτίμησης και ελεύθερης έκφρασης που προάγει την υγιή ψυχοκοινωνική εξέλιξη και την επιτυχή κοινωνική προσαρμογή των μαθητών απ’ όπου κι αν προέρχονται. Το πρώτο μέρος της εργασίας ασχολείται με τη βιβλιογραφική ανασκόπηση και το θεωρητικό υπόβαθρο. Εστιάζεται στις έννοιες της συμπερίληψης, των στάσεων, των διακρίσεων και της ομοφοβίας ιδωμένες από ανθρωπολογικό, ψυχολογικό και κοινωνιολογικό πρίσμα και μέσα από τα ευρήματα άλλων ερευνών στην Ελλάδα και τον κόσμο. Παρουσιάζεται επίσης το πλαίσιο της ΛΟΑΤΚΙ συμβίωσης και γονεϊκότητας στο εξωτερικό και την Ελλάδα. Στη συνέχεια μελετώνται οι βιωμένες εμπειρίες έξι εκπαιδευτικών τους με μαθητές/τριες - μέλη ΛΟΑΤΚΙ οικογενειών. Η έρευνα γίνεται σύμφωνα με τις αρχές της Ερμηνευτικής Φαινομενολογικής Ανάλυσης (IPA). Στόχος είναι να διερευνηθεί η αντίληψη από τη δική τους οπτική με ενεργό το ρόλο του ερευνητή. Στη συζήτηση επεκτείνεται ο προβληματισμός γύρω από την επιμόρφωση των εκπαιδευτικών σε σχετικά ζητήματα και αναδεικνύεται η σημασία της συμβουλευτικής στο χώρο της εκπαίδευσης μέσα από τη διαλεκτική με τις φεμινιστικές θεωρίες και τις συμβουλευτικές προσεγγίσεις.This dissertation aims to explore primary school teachers' beliefs, knowledge and attitudes regarding students coming from LGBTQI families. In recent years, the composition of school classes has become more and more diverse. The educational environment is a dynamic field where issues of inclusion concerning individuals from the LGBTQI community (lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals, trans, queer, intersex persons) are highlighted. Teachers play a central role in creating inclusive schools; in addition to the transfer of knowledge and the skill development, it is important that they create a school environment that does not exclude any child, that endorses mutual respect, appreciation and free expression, and promotes healthy psychosocial development and successful social adaptation of students wherever they come from. The first part of this essay deals with the literature review and theoretical background. It focuses on the terms of inclusion, stances, discrimination and homophobia. The context of LGBTQI parenting in Greece and abroad is also presented. The methodology of the research part is then presented. Six primary school teachers who had experience with students that were members of LGBTQ families were interviewed. The analysis of the interviews were conducted using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), which allows the in depth examination of the participants’ experiences while simultaneously acknowledging the researcher’s active role. The results are presented and discussed highlighting the importance of counseling in the field of education also in relation to the inclusion of students coming from LGBTQI families