Essay 1: Shopping Goals, Goal Concreteness, and Conditional Promotions. We propose a two-stage model to describe the increasing concreteness of consumers' goals during the shopping process, testing the model through a series of field experiments at a convenience store. Using a number of...

Individuals are involved in daily decision making situations under varying levels of certainty and ease of gathering information, characterized by many factors such as the need to make payments, or the desire to fulfill goals. Essay 1 proposes that when individuals are faced with environments...

This thesis consists of five related essays which explore new approaches to help design successful and profitable new products. The primary focus is the front end of the process where the product development team is seeking improved input from customers and improved ideas for developing products...

Essay 1: Translation Errors in the Aggregation of Consumer Recommendations There has been a substantial increase of websites providing consumers with recommendations about products and services. These recommendations are usually presented in the form of verbal reviews and numerical ratings. It...

The recent surge in the globalization of markets in various industries has brought global brands to the attention of consumers worldwide. Just as information connects consumers across geographical borders in seconds, globalization is a common stream among many industries, which leads consumers...