How Do Consumers Make Choices? A Summary of Evidence from Marketing and Psychology

In this paper I review the evidence from marketing and psychology literature about the purchase behavior of consumers. I concentrate on the characteristics of the choice process, choice of the external information source and nature of the information obtained from these sources. The impact of important systematic differences among consumers and products on choice behavior is also discussed.Consumer Choice, Information, Decision-making, Marketing

On the performance of the representative agent during out-of-equilibrium dynamics

This note contributes to the discussion about the representative agent's ability to characterize the collection of agents. We perform two exercises in context of a fairly general environment and show that even if the representative agent is powerful enough to describe the society in equilibrium, she might fail in describing the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the system. It is established that this feature is not specific to the systems with or without interacting agents.Representative agent, heterogeneity, interaction, out-of-equilibrium dynamics

R&D Behavior and the Emergence of Fat Tailed Firm Size Distributions

This paper presents a simple boundedly rational model of a firm and consumer behaviour. We formulate an entry game, where every firm decides on investing in R&D for inventing a new product that will appeal to certain group of consumers. The success depends on the amount of funds available for the project as well as firm's familiarity with the relevant proportion of taste space. We identify the section of parameter space where firms have an incentive to diversify. For these parameter constellations the model results in rich industrial dynamics. Equilibrium rm size distributions are heavy tailed and skewed to the right. The heaviness of the tail depends on one industry-level parameter.R&D, Product innovation, Market knowledge, Firm size distribution

Learning How to Consume and Returns to Product Promotion

This paper presents the computational model of consumer behaviour. We consider two sources of product specic consumer skill acquisition, termed here as learning how to consume: learning by consuming and consumer socialization. Consumers utilize these two sources in order to derive higher valuations for products they are consuming. In this framework we discuss the behavior of returns to product promotion relative to the changes in product characteristics, such as quality and userfriendliness, as well as in case of varying intensity of consumer socialization. The main finding is that in case of duopoly the dependence of returns to advertising on product quality is not monotonic as it has been claimed by earlier studies. Additional important finding indicating the importance of the models with interacting agents is that returns to advertising exhibit qualitatively different behavior in case of zero intensity of consumer socialization.Consumer skills, learning by consuming, consumer socialization, product promotion, returns to advertising

(S,s) Pricing: Does the Heterogeneity Wipe Out the Asymmetry on Micro Level?

In this paper I present a model of asymmetric pricing. Firms here follow the (S,s) pricing rule with different lengths of tails. I use numerical simulations with four-state shocks to detect the link between the present asymmetry in pricing on the micro level and asymmetry in aggregate output movements. This paper investigates whether the asymmetry on firm level can result in asymmetry on the macro level and what is the role of heterogeneity of agents in the process. It looks at two kinds of asymmetries on the aggregate level: (i) asymmetric output responses to positive and negative monetary shocks and (ii) asymmetric responses to shocks during different phases of business cycle. The basic conclusion is that to some extent the first type of asymmetry can be attributed to the asymmetry of adjustment bands and that heterogeneity softens the effect, but the second type of asymmetry is the result of (S,s) pricing behaviour of firms, thus of heterogeneity itself.(S,s) pricing, Asymmetry, Four-state shocks, Heterogeneity

Asymmetric (S,s) pricing: implications for monetary policy

This paper presents a model of asymmetric (S,s) pricing. We investigate implications of such a behavior for the effectiveness of the monetary policy. We discuss two types of asymmetric responses to monetary interventions. One is the symmetry in the responses to positive and negative monetary shocks. The other is the variance in responses to monetary shocks during booms and recessions. The conclusion is that first type of asymmetry can be attributed to the asymmetry in adjustment bands, while the second kind of asymmetry is a result of firm heterogeneity, and asymmetry of (S,s) bands does not contribute to it

Habit Formation, Information Exchange and the Social Geography of Demand

This paper is concerned with clustering in demand. We present a discrete choice model of consumption that incorporates habit formation and information exchange among consumers in fixed social networks. We provide an analytical solution to a special case of the model by using technical tools from chemistry and biology. We demonstrate the validity of these results for the general case numerically. It is shown that clustering in demand is a solution to the complex system we are analyzing, and that clustering pattern can be short-term or long-lasting depending on the characteristics of the society.demand, clustering, information, partial differential equations

Inertia, Interaction and Clustering in Demand

We present a discrete choice model of consumption that incorporates two empirically validated aspects of consumer behaviour: inertia in consumption and interaction among consumers. We specify the interaction structure as a regular lattice with consumers interacting only with immediate neighbours. We investigate the equilibrium behaviour of the resulting system and show analytically that for a large range of initial conditions clustering in economic behaviour emerges and persists indefinitely. Short-run behaviour of the model is investigated numerically. This exercise indicates that equilibrium properties of the system can predict a short-run behaviour of the model quite accurately.Clustering, Interaction, Habits, Consumer choice

Word-of-mouth interaction and the organization of behaviour

We present a discrete choice model based on agent interaction. The framework combines the features of two well-known models of word-of-mouthcommunication (Ellison and Fudenberg, 1995 and Bala and Goyal, 2001).Interaction structure is a regular periodic lattice with decision-makers interacting only with immediate neighbours. We investigate the long-runequilibrium) behaviour of the resulting system and show that for a largerange of initial conditions clustering in economic behaviour emerges andpersists inde?nitely. The setup allows for the analysis of multi-option environments. For these environments we derive the distribution of optionpopularity in equilibrium.word-of-mouth, inertia, clustering, choice.

Duopolistic price competition with captives

We extend the Bertrand duopolistic competition to include captives. These are consumers that have no choice between the suppliers. Usual population of shoppers are modeled performing a sequential search in order to decide where to buy a homogenous good. These two simple departures from the original setup have sharp consequences. First, we find that duopolistic price competition is not robust to inclusion of captives. The equilibrium results starkly differ and the only possible equilibrium now includes duopolists charging monopolistic prices. Second, addition of sequential search introduces multiplicity of pure strategy Nash equilibria. In this setup, we observe perverse optimal response to competitor's price changes. Notably, we find that the firm might want to reduce the price in response to the competitor's price increase, which is at odds with the usual undercutting principle. Third, we investigate the behavior of equilibrium prices depending on the heterogeneity in consumer risk attitudes. We find that the higher consumer heterogeneity with respect to acceptance of risky gambles leads to higher prices in equilibrium