The growth of e-commerce, accelerated by the covid-19 pandemic, have fundamentally changed how companies commercialize their products. To remain competitive, many retail companies must transition parts of, or their entire, selling process to the internet. This poses the challenge of creating a website which satisfies as many of the needs of the consumer as possible, whilst still being accessible and easy to use. The usability of a website, which essentially is the perceived quality of a user experience, affects both to what extent customers experience satisfaction and to what extent they perform purchases.The purpose of this study was both to examine the relationship between selling strategies, such as the decoy effect and the compromise effect, and perceived usability of an e-commercewebsite, as well as determining how effective said selling strategies are for increasing purchase amount.By creating a high usability e-commerce website for phone cases and related products and then performing user tests in which 42 individuals were asked to perform purchase scenarios in which they were or were not exposed to selling strategies, the correlation between the perceived usability and the effectiveness of selling strategies were investigated. The 42 user tests showed no correlation between the effectiveness of the selling strategies and the perceived usability of the website. An increase in the perceived usability did however correlate to an increase in average purchase amount, and the selling strategies did increase the average purchase amount when applied. The lack of correlation between perceived usability and the effectiveness of selling strategies were inconsistent with the initial hypothesis. The discussion of this paper addresses potential explanations to the result. Several parts of the study can be altered to eliminate or mitigate identified error sources in the method. The extent to which these error sources affected the results of this study is not conclusively established, but several future improvements can be made to continue this academic inquiry, which is considered both relevant and of increasing importance.

This dissertation is a study of non-standard economic behavior. The first chapter concerns two widely observed violations of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, the Compromise and Attraction effects. I construct a novel method of representing them by reducing the context of a menu to a frame, encompassing the worst option along each attribute in the menu, and observing a collection of preferences indexed by frames. The agent behaves as though a good’s attractiveness along each attribute is judged relative to the frame with declining marginal utility. This allows me to give a novel interpretation of the compromise and attraction effects: they are consistent with indifference curves rotating clockwise as the frame moves down, and counter- clockwise as it goes left. It also allows me to give a representation theorem showing the behavioral axioms associated with a utility representation taking a good and the frame as arguments. The second chapter applies the representation from Chapter One to electoral politics. It shows that incorporating these preferences generates equilibria where extremist candidates enter plurality elections in order to attractively frame their preferred moderate candidate, even if the extremists have probability zero of obtaining office themselves. While such candidates are frequently observed in elections, and there are papers generating equilibria with centrist sure losers (including Solow (2015)), this is the first paper generating equilibria with these extremist candidates without unusual assumptions on election rules, or non single-peaked preferences. This paper creates a four candidate equilibrium with two extremist sure loser candidates, each on the fringes of opinion. The third chapter concerns the effect of guilt on preferences in the circumstance of gift giving. A decision maker who experiences guilt may receive an increase in surplus from a gift card allowing guilt-free indulgence, potentially beyond even the surplus she’d receive from an equivalent cash gift. This paper isolates the behavior of guilt avoidance by exploiting a multi-period setting which incorporates a distinction between the decision maker’s preferences over what she’d receive, and what she would choose. A representation inspired by Kopylov (2009) is adapted to this setting, providing a representation theorem for these preferences.

Då det ur ett konsumentperspektiv finns ett stort intresse för att kombinera olika miljöperspektiv i en enhetlig märkning samtidigt som forskning visar att en kombination av olika märkningar genererar en ökad betalningsvilja, åsyftar denna studie att undersöka hur dessa två respektive typer av märkningssätt påverkar konsumentens preferenser av varumärket samt hur dessa preferenser skiljer sig åt. Föreliggande studie testar dessutom huruvida Simonsons (1989) teori om kompromisseffekter är applikabel för att öka konsumenters preferenser för ekologiska produkter när ett superekologiskt alternativ tillförs ett valset med ett konventionellt och ett ekologiskt alternativ. Studien bidrar därmed med information till beslutsfattare inom livsmedelsbranschen för hur ekologiska attribut påverkar konsumenters preferenser och betalningsviljan för ekologiska produkter.     408 respondenter har medverkat i en enkätundersökning där svaren har analyserats med hjälp av följande statistiska analyser: reliabilitetstest, t-test, korrelationsanalys, faktoranalys och klusteranalys. Resultaten visar att trots att de flesta konsumenter tenderar att ha såväl en positiv attityd som en ökad betalningsvilja för de ekologiska alternativen, väljer fortfarande majoriteten av konsumenterna det konventionella alternativet, varvid ingen kompromisseffekt uppstår. För de allra flesta av studiens respondenter motsvarar med andra ord inte den ökade betalningsviljan rådande marknadspriser, något som bland annat skulle kunna bero på att konsumenterna inte känner erforderligt med tilltro till miljömärkningarna. Priset kan dessutom fungera som ett hinder mot ett nytt beteende, varvid konsumenten istället av ren vana håller kvar vid det gamla. Vad gäller konsumenternas syn på superekologiska märkningar tycks ett superekologiskt trioalternativ i dagsläget vara att föredra. Något mer överraskande är att respondenterna, i motsats till vad flertalet tidigare studier har visat (Roddy, Cowan & Hutchinson 1994; CEC, 1999; Magnusson, Arvola, Hursti, Åberg & Sjödén, 2001; Torjusen, Lieblein, Wandel & Francis, 2001; m.fl.), dessutom upplever smak och kvalitet hos de ekologiska alternativen som sämre jämfört med det konventionella alternativet.   Eftersom de flesta konsumenter de facto uttrycker en ökad betalningsvilja för ekologiska alternativ, anser vi avslutningsvis att en mindre prisskillnad mellan konventionella och ekologiska produkter är något som beslutsfattare i livsmedelsbranschen framför allt borde ta i beaktning för att i framtiden öka antalet konsumenter av ekologiska produkter. / From a consumer perspective, there exists a considerable interest in combining different environmental perspective in an uniform label. On the other hand, since research shows that a combination of different labels generates a greater willingness to pay, this study aim to examine how these two respective types of labeling affect consumers brand preferences, and furthermore how these preferences differ. The present study also test whether Simonson's (1989) theory of compromise effect could be applied to increase consumer preference for organic products, when adding an organic premium alternative to a choice set with a conventional and an organic alternative. Thus, the study contributes information to decision makers in the food industry about how ecological attributes affect consumers’ brand preferences and their willingness to pay for organic products.   408 respondents have participated in a survey in which the answers were analyzed using the following statistical analyzes: reliability test, t-test, correlation analysis, factor analysis and cluster analysis. The results show that although most consumers tend to have both a positive attitude and an increased willingness to pay for organic alternatives, the majority of consumers still choose the conventional alternative, why no compromise effect occurs. For most of the study's respondents the increased willingness to pay does not correspond with current market prices. Among other things this could be explained by consumers’ lack of confidence in eco-labels. The price may also act as a barrier to a new behavior, whereby the consumer out of pure habit chooses the conventional alternative. Based on the consumer preferences for organic premium labels, the organic premium combination alternative seems to be the preferable choice. Somewhat more surprising, the respondents in this study, in contrast to most previous studies (Roddy et al., 1994; CEC, 1999; Magnusson et al., 2001; Torjusen et al., 2001; etc.), perceived the taste and quality of the ecological alternatives as inferior to the conventional alternative.   Finally, since the respondents show an increased willingness to pay for organic products, we think that decision makers in the food industry primarily should take into consideration that a minor price difference between conventional and organic products is something that could increase the number of consumers buying organic products in the future.