In this paper we explore the underlying consumer heterogeneity in competitive markets for subscription-based IT services that exhibit network effects. Insights into consumer heterogeneity with respect to a given service are paramount in forecasting future subscriptions, understanding the impact...

Many economic decisions involve a substantial amount of uncertainty, and therefore crucially depend on how individuals process probabilistic information. In this paper, we investigate the capability for probability judgment in a representative sample of the German population. Our results show...

Bayesian consumers infer that hidden add-on prices (e.g. the cost of ink for a printer) are likely to be high prices. If consumers are Bayesian, firms will not shroud information in equilibrium. However, shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic (or unaware) consumers. Such shrouding...

Using a unique dataset on health club attendance from Quebec, we look at the relationship between actual and expected attendance and how these relate to a reported measure of self-control problems at the time of contract signing. We find that a large majority of contract choices appear...

Consumer education is often considered an integral part of microinsurance schemes; a win-win solution that benefits both microinsurance practitioners and their clients. It is supposed to help low-income households make sound choices and practitioners stimulate demand. The current lack of...

Objective – Retailers often impose strict returning policies to control product returns without understanding the consumers' returned intention in the first place. Past research has shown that product return policies have little effect on product returns. As such, the aim of this research is...

Using a unique dataset on health club attendance from Quebec, we look at the relationship between actual and expected attendance and how these relate to a reported measure of self-control problems at the time of contract signing. We find that a large majority of contract choices appear...

We use restaurant food delivery sales tick data to investigate how prices reflect demand, allocate resources and impact profitability. We find that real-time demand can be used to accurately predict future demand over a short time frame, and that dynamic prices based on it reduce demand...

Current neoclassical microeconomic theory of rational consumer behavior affirms a unique consumer price-quantity relationship under conditions associated with monopolistic competition. Inverse demand will be just as own-price elastic as demand in the neighborhood of the limit state, while demand...

Preference consistency implies that people have learned their willingness to trade off attributes. We argue that this is not necessarily the case. Instead, we show that when preferences are learned in context (e.g., through repeated choices made from a trinary choice set that includes an...