Existing literature, based on signaling theory, suggests that money-back guarantees (MBGs) will be utilized by high-quality firms, where high quality is defined as a low likelihood of product return. However, in today's world, MBGs are ubiquitous among major retailers, even when the likelihood...

Managers of retail chains who seek to add new stores or close existing ones need to know the net impact of a store's opening/closure on the overall chain performance. This requires inferring the extent to which each store generates incremental sales as opposed to competing with other stores...

Consumer behavior researchers are getting more interested in the experiential aspect of consumption, which focuses on the fun and enjoyment that consumers derive from hedonic experiences. We build upon the experiential view of consumer behavior, and present an innovative modeling approach to...

A methodology for forecasting the sales of an ethical drug as a function of marketing effort before any sales data are available and for updating the forecast with a few periods of sales data is presented. Physicians' perceptions of the drug on a number of attributes, e.g. effectiveness, range...

A brand switching model that considers the choices: previous choice, current choice, and substitute choice, if the current choice were not available, is developed and estimated. An important assumption of the model is that the market consists of two types of consumers: "Loyals" and "Shoppers."...

In designing print ads, one of the decisions the advertiser must make is which color(s) to use as executional cues in the ad. Typically, color decisions are based on intuition and anecdotal evidence. To provide guidelines for these decisions, this research proposes and tests a conceptual...

We show how to calibrate a prospect model of decision making under risk for an individual. The prospect model is empirically compared to a utility model on two criteria, verification of the postulates of each model, and predictive accuracy. The empirical comparison is performed via three...