Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-137).

Thesis (Ph.D)--Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Chair: Garrow, Laurie; Committee Co-Chair: Castillo, Marco; Committee Co-Chair: Goldsman, David; Committee Member: Griffin, Paul; Committee Member: White, Chelsea (Chip). Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

In a constant search for meaning we humans cannot stop interpreting the world we find around us (Kelly, 1955) and this act of interpretation in its turn affects the way we behave. And yet, in spite of the obvious importance of interpretation, researchers have tended to shy away from studying it. Interpretation itself is a paradoxical undertaking and is difficult to face up to, even though paradox is an intrinsic part of our human nature (Pinker, 2003). This act of evasion has negative consequences. Instead of acknowledging our interpretations as subjective and changeable, they are assimilated as ultimate and objective truths, thereby distorting our behaviours. The mechanism of human interpretation is based on two paradoxical premises: preference and attitude. In practice, interpretation tends to become contorted in futile attempts to relieve the inevitable tensions between these two premises. By examining aspects of philosophy, psychology and linguistics, this study argues that the tendency to substitute truth for subjective interpretation is persistent and damaging, but can in fact be resolved by applying the Janusian attitudinal mapping tool (Mostovicz, Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 2008). The mapping tool looks specifically at one dimension of the paradox distortion - consciousness, and offers a conscious, purposeful and dynamic interpretative process to relieve the contortion. The study then explores the difficulties and the benefits of dealing with paradox in a conscious, purposeful, and dynamic way, noting that these are precisely the challenges that truth-substitution seeks to evade. As human purpose is dynamic by its nature, this study rejects traditional static research paradigms and instead proposes a Janusian paradigm. Similarly, traditional static tools of enquiry have been adapted to reflect individual motivations, taking into account the learnings from dynamic personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955; Hinkle, 1965). The study examines the mechanism of interpretation by investigating perceptions of diamonds as luxury’. The study defines the six facets and four layers of effective, paradoxical interpretation and then presents two distinct pathways of interpretation — Theta and Lambda — to describe how individuals use this interpretive framework to achieve different life purposes. For Thetas, that life purpose centres on the need for affiliation and belonging, whereas for Lambdas, it centres on the need for challenge and personal achievement. As the role of interpretation is paramount to meaningful existence, the knowledge-building meta-framework which this study proposes can be applied universally to any field of enquiry and has already provided both theoretical and applied benefits, expanding the range and relevance of human knowledge

To make informed buying decisions, online consumers increasingly turn to online product review systems, or electronic word-of-mouth systems (EWOMSs). Previous studies suggest that EWOMS designs can determine consumer behavior. Even some tiny changes, such as background color or picture, can greatly affect consumers’ buying behavior. Hence, it is critical to investigate how designs of EWOMS influence online consumers’ buying behavior. This research develops a theoretical model of the effects of EWOMS designs on consumer purchase behavior. We conducted a study using experiments to test and validate the proposed theoretical model. Our findings indicate that online purchase behavior within EWOMSs can be enhanced by three conditions. First, perceived value should be enhanced by a design that ensures that the first review encountered by consumers is positive. Second, confidence in judgment about value should be increased by displaying the most helpful reviews first. Last, consumers’ emotional states should be enhanced by using a design that facilitates the processing of reviews. Such a design could further positively impact consumers’ confidence. This research not only enhances our understanding of the effects of EWOMS designs but it also contributes to consumer behavior research by studying the effects of confidence in judgment about value. In addition, this research makes important contributions to ecommerce companies, online consumers, and policy makers. / published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Many public and private entities have heavily invested in efficiency measures and renewable sources to generate energy savings and reduce fossil fuel consumption. Private utilities have invested over $4 billion in energy efficiency with 56% of these investments directed towards consumer incentives. However, the magnitude of the expected savings and the effectiveness of the technological measures remain uncertain. Multiple studies attribute the reasons driving these uncertainties to behavioral phenomena such as “the rebound effect.” This work provides insights on the uncertainties generating potential differences between expected and observed performances of demand-side measures (DSM) and distributed generation strategies, using mixed methods that employ both empirical analyses and engineering economics. This study also provides guidelines to stakeholders to effectively use the benefits from DSM strategies towards asset preservation for affordable multifamily houses. Section 2 describes how joint efficiency gains compare to similar singular efficiency gains for single-family households and discusses the implications of these differences. This work provides empirical models of marginal technical change for multiple residential electricity end-uses, including space conditioning technologies, appliances, devices, and electric vehicles. Results indicate that the relative household level of technological sophistication significantly influences the performance of demand-side measures, particularly the presence of a programmable thermostat. As to space conditioning, results demonstrate that sufficient consistent technical improvement leads to net energy savings, which could be due to technical factors or to a declining marginal rebound effect. Section 3 empirically evaluates the performance of distributed residential photovoltaic (PV) solar panels and identifies the technological and demographic factors influencing PV performance and adoption choice. Results show that modeling PV adoption choice significantly impacts the household energy demand, suggesting that the differences in the actual evaluated behavioral responses and the self-reported changes in electricity consumption are more complex than assumed by other studies. The analysis indicates that electricity use decreases marginally for PV adopters if sufficient efficiency improvements in space conditioning are made. Results further imply that households that adopt solar panels might “take back” roughly 24% of the annual electricity production for PV technologies. Section 4 describes replicable engineering economic models for estimating conventional rehabilitation, energy, and water retrofit costs for low-income multi-family housing units. The purpose of this study is to prioritize policy interventions aimed at maintaining property location and use, and to identify the capital investment needs that could be partially provided by local and state housing authorities. Section 5 synthesizes the work, describes the future work, provides guidelines for local and state efficiency program administrators, and insights on prioritizing and designing efficiency interventions. / text

Consumers are attracted to large assortments, but they experience negative consequences when they ultimately must make a choice form these large assortments. In Essay 1, four experiments examine whether a common retailer strategy--the use of recommendations such as "best seller" signs--attenuates or exacerbates these negative consequences. Results show that best seller signs can exacerbate decision difficulty and regret as consumers engage in a more extensive consideration of options, and these larger consideration sets are partly due to the increase consideration of non-signed options. The extent to which consumers have developed preferences is a key moderator of the effect of best seller signage on choice from large assortments. For consumers possessing more (less) developed preferences, best seller signage in large assortments increases (decreases) the size of consumer consideration sets and exacerbates (attenuates) decision difficulty and regret. The resultant choice outcome is that best seller signage is more likely to increase the overall quantity purchased when consumers have more compared to less developed preferences. Essay 2 investigates consideration set construction strategies consumers use to narrow down assortments into a more manageable consideration set, particularly when faced with large assortments. Past research proposes that consumers use two strategies to narrow down an assortment: include and exclude. Four experiments show that consumers are more likely to use an include strategy when faced with a large compared to a small assortment. It is argued that this preference for an include consideration set strategy is due to the decrease in relative effort required by an include strategy as the number of options in the set increases. The essay shows that compared to using an exclude strategy, the use of an include strategy leads consumers to (1) form smaller consideration sets, (2) express more (less) positive (negative) thoughts, (3) increase (decrease) the weighting of positive (negative) attributes, and (4) elaborate more on options in the consideration set and less on options not in the consideration set. The implications of using an include versus exclude strategy on final choice are explored and directions for future research are discussed.

Social media is developing rapidly and China has become the largest market of social media usage. Due to numerous international social media platforms being unavailable in China, Chinese consumers have different usage and attitude of social media from those in other countries. According to previous studies, consumers’ usage and attitude of social media can be different due to their gender. Due to these two factors, it is interesting to study gender differences in attitudes toward social media in a Chinese context. By using questionnaires, data are collected from students in Shanghai, China. By applying SPSS, analysis of the results shows that Chinese online consumers basically have positive attitude toward using social media and positively think social media influence them. Most of Chinese respondents spend more than 1 hour on social media daily. Generally speaking, Chinese consumers use social media in order to communicate with others and search for different events. As to gender difference, Chinese women are more likely to follow a famous person by using social media than men. Both men and women use Wechat and Weibo the most frequently.

No description available.

Past consumer research on mood has focused mainly on the impact of pre-processing mood on attitude formation, cognitive process, or behaviour. The present study, however, opens a new research direction by investigating the impact of ad characteristics on pre-processing mood. In particular, this research develops a model by combining the mood management and mood disruption mechanisms to answer the following interrelated research questions: (1) How does a consumer's mood interact with an ad's characteristics? (2) What is the effect of this interaction on subsequent mood and ad evaluation? (3) When will the above effect on ad evaluation be more likely to occur? Before the main experiment was conducted, a scale was developed to measure the mood potency of an ad -- a construct developed to capture the dimensions of an ad in eliciting affective responses. Following a systematic psychometric scale-development procedure, a reliable and valid scale with eighteen items was obtained. A 2x2x2 between-subject factorial design was conducted to test the model. The treatments included pre-processing mood pleasure, pre-processing mood arousal, and mood potency of an ad. The experiment involved exposing groups of subjects to one ad after listening to one piece of music, then comparing ad evaluations by music condition. The ad's mood potency was manipulated to elicit either a positive or negative feeling. Music was employed to vary pleasure and arousal prior to ad processing. Altogether two ads and four pieces of music were used. For the dependent measure considered (i.e., ad evaluation), findings were in accordance with a mood management interpretation. It was found that a positive mood potency ad was preferred to a negative mood potency ad either in a good or bad mood condition. Moreover, this effect was more pronounced when the arousal level was high. Regarding predictions on change in pleasure/arousal due to an exposure of an ad, only the change in pleasure yielded marginal support for the mood disruption mechanism. The findings of this study not only contribute to our understanding of research on advertising context and affective responses but also have important implications for managerial decisions on ad placing, design, and copy testing.

This thesis examines how consumers value promotions for delayed consumption depending on the time of redemption, the types of benefits offered, and the scope of the offering. The specific focus is on promotions that are redeemed in the future at the time of consumption, which we label "advance promotions". In the first essay, results from three studies demonstrate that consumers value hedonic advance promotions differently from delayed consumption of stand-alone goods or delayed incentives (rebates). Hedonic advance promotions are consistently overvalued, unless they are incongruent with consumers' consumption goals (e.g., when consumers regulate their consumption of the hedonic benefits). In contrast, advance utilitarian promotions are overvalued only when they are congruent with the consumption context of the target product (e.g., when the target consumption is also utilitarian). In general, we find that valuation of future utilitarian promotions depends on the consumption context but valuation of future hedonic promotions depends on when the target product is consumed. These findings are explained by the focalism bias that was originally suggested by affective forecasting and Construal Level Theory and are further expanded in this dissertation. / The second essay explores the shape of the value function for hedonic advance promotions. It addresses the issue of what is the optimal depth of a promotion in an advance consumption setting. Drawing from the focalism framework presented in the first essay and on recent research on the valuation of hedonic goods, we argue that the shape of the function is more convex or step-like for advance promotions than for immediate ones. We then demonstrate that this finding has implications for the common variety-seeking behaviour that is generally associated with delayed consumption.