This study examines the design and trustworthiness factors of recommendation systems forexperience goods in the e-commerce industry. Experience goods are products that involvesensory experiences and pose challenges for consumers to assess and select online. Theresearch adopts a mixed method approach, combining exploratory and interpretive researchmethods to gain insights into users' interpretations and meanings attached to their experiences.The methodology includes analyzing publications, conducting a survey, and objectivelydocumenting recommendation systems in the alpine industry. The survey collects opinions fromparticipants who have used various recommendation systems, covering aspects such as usermodel, item model, recommendation algorithm, user interface, evaluation, and trustworthiness.A thematic analysis is employed to identify patterns and meaningful themes in the data. Thefindings emphasize the importance of understanding user preferences, balancingrecommendations, improving accuracy, enhancing interface usability, incorporating feedback,and addressing recommendation diversity to enhance trustworthiness. A hybrid filteringapproach with feature-based systems and integrated behavior-based techniques is identified aseffective. While the survey's convenience sampling and limited sample size may limitgeneralizability, the findings provide insights for designing effective recommendation systems forexperience goods in e-commerce. By considering the strengths and limitations of differenttechniques, vendors can create systems that assist customers in purchasing these uniqueproducts. However, recommendation systems should be viewed as a valuable tool rather thanthe sole determinant in purchase decisions for alpine equipment. Further research with a largerand more diverse sample is recommended to validate the findings and improve generalizability.

<p><strong> Syfte: </strong>Studien syftar till att identifiera upplevda risker och riskreducerare vid e-handel, samt beskriva hur dessa påverkas av produktens och Internetbutikens karaktär. </p><p><strong>Metod: </strong>Data insamlas genom enkätstudie, fokusgruppsintervjuer samt observationer. Fokusgruppsintervjuerna ger dels förklaring till enkätstudien och bidrar dels till ytterligare perspektiv. Observationer av Internetbutiker genomförs för att identifiera riskreducerare.</p><p><strong>Teori:</strong> Främst används teorier om upplevd risk, riskreducering samt produkters karaktär.</p><p><strong>Slutsats: </strong>De upplevda risker som identifierats vid köp över Internet är <em>funktionell risk</em>, <em>leveransrisk, tidsrisk</em>, <em>psykologisk risk, finansiell risk, betalningsrisk, källrisk</em> samt <em>social risk. </em>Undersökningen visar att dessa upplevda risker varierar beroende av konsumenten, produktens karaktär samt Internetbutikens karaktär. En mängd olika riskreducerare har identifierats varav word-of-mouth har varit den mest betydande och som i viss mån kan reducera samtliga risker. Produktens karaktär påverkar konsumenten gällande beslutet om köpet kommer att genomföras i en fysisk butik eller i en Internetbutik. De flesta konsumenter har en positiv attityd till att köpa exempelvis resor och böcker på Internet, medan många konsumenter däremot är negativa till att köpa kläder på Internet. Detta beror på att produktens karaktär är sådan att en utvärdering av kläders kvalitet är relativt enkel att göra i en fysisk butik, men desto svårare att göra i en Internetbutik, vilket innebär att den funktionella risken ökar. Gällande resor och böcker är produkterna lika svåra att utvärdera i en fysisk butik som i en Internetbutik. Riskreducerare kopplade till den upplevda kvaliteten kan vara kombinationer av köp från Internetbutiker och fysiska butiker, men även word-of-mouth samt egen tidigare erfarenhet av produkten. Gällande köp från internationella Internetbutiker är de främsta riskerna leveransrisk, tidsrisk och finansiell risk. Resultatet visar att konsumentens kännedom om företaget, genom tidigare egna erfarenheter eller word-of-mouth påverkar den upplevda risken. Detta gäller för både svenska och internationella Internetbutiker. </p>

Syfte: Studien syftar till att identifiera upplevda risker och riskreducerare vid e-handel, samt beskriva hur dessa påverkas av produktens och Internetbutikens karaktär.  Metod: Data insamlas genom enkätstudie, fokusgruppsintervjuer samt observationer. Fokusgruppsintervjuerna ger dels förklaring till enkätstudien och bidrar dels till ytterligare perspektiv. Observationer av Internetbutiker genomförs för att identifiera riskreducerare. Teori: Främst används teorier om upplevd risk, riskreducering samt produkters karaktär. Slutsats: De upplevda risker som identifierats vid köp över Internet är funktionell risk, leveransrisk, tidsrisk, psykologisk risk, finansiell risk, betalningsrisk, källrisk samt social risk. Undersökningen visar att dessa upplevda risker varierar beroende av konsumenten, produktens karaktär samt Internetbutikens karaktär. En mängd olika riskreducerare har identifierats varav word-of-mouth har varit den mest betydande och som i viss mån kan reducera samtliga risker. Produktens karaktär påverkar konsumenten gällande beslutet om köpet kommer att genomföras i en fysisk butik eller i en Internetbutik. De flesta konsumenter har en positiv attityd till att köpa exempelvis resor och böcker på Internet, medan många konsumenter däremot är negativa till att köpa kläder på Internet. Detta beror på att produktens karaktär är sådan att en utvärdering av kläders kvalitet är relativt enkel att göra i en fysisk butik, men desto svårare att göra i en Internetbutik, vilket innebär att den funktionella risken ökar. Gällande resor och böcker är produkterna lika svåra att utvärdera i en fysisk butik som i en Internetbutik. Riskreducerare kopplade till den upplevda kvaliteten kan vara kombinationer av köp från Internetbutiker och fysiska butiker, men även word-of-mouth samt egen tidigare erfarenhet av produkten. Gällande köp från internationella Internetbutiker är de främsta riskerna leveransrisk, tidsrisk och finansiell risk. Resultatet visar att konsumentens kännedom om företaget, genom tidigare egna erfarenheter eller word-of-mouth påverkar den upplevda risken. Detta gäller för både svenska och internationella Internetbutiker.

¡§Time¡¨ is fleeting. People tend to ponder the needs in the present and develop procrastination for the future. Because of these tendencies, researchers in marketing examine topics such as impulsive buying and purchase in advance. For companies, understanding how consumers perceive time differently is beneficial to their promotion strategy development. Previous research has investigated the impacts of temporal distance and time window. Based on these time perspectives, this research incorporates two moderators in influencing consumer behavior: mental simulation and product type. The study uses experimental design to explore the advertising effects and gift coupon redemption. With the manipulation of different time perspectives, two experiments are conducted. Experiment 1 is a 2 (temporal distance: near future vs. distant future) ¡Ñ 2 (mental simulation: process simulation vs. outcome simulation) ¡Ñ 2 (product type: search goods vs. experience goods) factorial design. Experiment 2 is a 2 (time window: short vs. long) ¡Ñ 2 (mental simulation: process simulation vs. outcome simulation) ¡Ñ 2 (product type: search goods vs. experience goods) factorial design. With the eight conditions, the participants¡¦ intention and behavior are assessed. Results indicate that when promoting a search good, outcome simulation presented in the ad is more effective to participants who see the near future than those who see the distant future. However, in the coupon redemption behavior, when redeeming an experience good, there will be interaction effect between time window and mental simulation. When redeeming an experience good under the long time window condition, outcome simulation gets higher redemption rate than process simulation. While under the short time window condition, process simulation enhances higher redemption rate than outcome simulation. The findings provide marketing insights regarding how to frame time and mental simulation differently in the promotions while product type is considered.

The buying decision process describes how the consumer makes a purchase decision through a rational process (Markin, 1979) and an understanding for how consumers make a purchase decision can according to Sands et al. (2010) be obtained by increased knowledge for the information search process (the second part of the buying decision process) before a purchase. Today’s society offers great opportunity to obtain information (Rahim &amp; Clemens, 2012; Bawden &amp; Robinson, 2009) and by that there are in other words good opportunities for a rational acting by the consumers. However, there are factors working against that consumers act rationally and seek information prior to their purchases primarily in the form of the concept of information overload (Bawden &amp; Robinson, 2009) which claims that consumers are limited in their information search because there is too much information but also other factors such as lack of time (Wood &amp; Neal, 2009) and ability to find information (Slegers et al. 2012) are believed to affect the information search process. The purpose of this essay is to describe the information search behavior of consumers prior to a purchase considering irrational purchase decisions or the possibility of rational purchase decisions linked to product category and age because these variables are assumed to have an impact on the information search behavior prior to a purchase (Nelson, 1970; Phillips &amp; Sternthal, 1977; Sledgers et al., 2012). The method applied in this essay is structured interviews conducted in a shopping center in the central parts of Örebro and the participating respondents are consumers who just made a purchase. The results of the study indicate that the majority of the consumers are making irrational purchase decisions and that they therefore do not use the opportunity to act rationally, although today’s society provide good opportunities. The information search behavior doesn’t seem to depend on product category except that the information sources used differ among categories. The result also shows that younger consumers search more information in comparison with older consumers. Another finding is that neither ability to find information, lack of time or information overload seem to be reasons for that the majority of the consumers have not searched for information and nor do it seem to be the reason for why the consumers that do search for information stop to search. That they are not seeking seems instead to be because they feel that they know enough about the kind of product they have bought and the main reason that those who search stop to search is that they feel that they have found enough information to make a purchase decision. Key words: Consumer behavior, purchase decisions, the buying decision process, information search, rationality, irrationality, search goods, experience goods, information overload

This dissertation contains three essays on theoretical analysis of pricing and promotional strategies. Chapter 1 serves as a brief introduction that provides a motivation and an overview of the topics covered in the subsequent chapters. In Chapter 2, we study optimal couponing strategies in a differentiated duopoly with repeat purchase. Both firms can distribute defensive coupons alone, defensive and offensive coupons together, or mass media coupons. They can also determine how many coupons to offer. Allowing consumers to change their tastes for the firms' products over time, we find that the optimal couponing strategy for the firms is to only distribute coupons to all of the customers who buy from them. The effects of intertemporally constant preferences and consumer myopia on the profitability of the optimal couponing are investigated as well. Chapter 3 examines the profitability of behavior-based price discrimination (BBPD) by duopolists producing horizontally differentiated experience goods. We consider a three-stage game in which the firms first make price discrimination decisions followed by two-stage pricing decisions. The main findings are: (i) there are two subgame perfect Nash equilibria where both firms do not collect information about consumers' purchase histories so that neither firm price discriminates and where both firms collect consumer information to practice BBPD; and (ii) BBPD is more profitable than uniform pricing if sufficiently many consumers have a poor experience with the firms' products. The asymmetric case where one firm produces experience goods and the other search goods is also investigated. Chapter 4 provides a possible explanation of the fact that one ticket price is charged for all movies (regardless of their quality) in the motion-picture industry. Considering a model a la Hotelling in which moviegoers form their beliefs about movie quality through pricing schemes to which an exhibitor commits, we characterize the conditions under which committing to uniform pricing is more profitable than committing to variable pricing. The welfare consequences of a uniform pricing commitment and some extensions of the model are discussed as well. / Ph. D.

近年台灣行銷市場中，網路口碑之於消費者的重要性不言而喻，其應用成為行銷顯學之一。不過觀察目前網路口碑相關研究，多數仍聚焦在傳播者評論口碑對象（產品、服務、品牌等）的傳播過程、網路口碑影響消費者購買意圖或品牌忠誠的程度，或是正負面口碑差異等面向，較少從口碑傳播者、產品及接收者本身屬性（類型、來源國等）一致的角度，探討是否會影響說服效果，而「性別」正是一項鮮少被觸及的重要屬性。事實上，性別一致產生的效果，在早期的廣告行銷研究中，即不斷被證實存在，能有效帶來消費者態度行為的正向影響（Caballero & Solomon, 1984）。然而網路作為傳播媒介的研究中卻缺乏相關的討論，因此能否複製「性別具有一致性時，就會具有正相關效果」的結論猶未可知。 　　而「性別一致性效果」產生的機制亦分屬「一致性效果」、「自我一致性」的兩種不同心理狀態類別，本研究除了歸納原先定義不清的一致性效果涵義，更希望進一步探討何種機制對於消費者的影響較為重要。另一方面，「一致」情況亦存在「主觀」感知與「客觀」存在的差異，亦有區分之必要性。同時，亦不可忽略口碑中推薦產品本身具備的屬性特質，可能是會導致消費者在意性別線索的關鍵，在相關理論基礎下，推論消費者會依賴推薦者的形象來協助判斷（Zeithaml, 1988）。換句話說，欲瞭解產品屬性，也就是體驗性/搜尋性的產品將直接導致消費者對於性別一致的感知產生不同的交互作用，進而影響到整體口碑說服效果。 　　故本研究計有三個主要的操弄變項，分別是傳播者性別（男/女）、產品性別（男/女）與產品屬性（搜尋屬性/體驗屬性），在研究設計上乃是採用2 × 2 × 2的三因子實驗設計（factorial experiment design），應變項則為受試者的口碑訊息診斷性、產品態度及購買意圖。 　　研究結果發現，客觀性別一致並不會影響消費者口碑說服效果，而不同產品屬性的交互作用下，客觀性別一致的重要性會在消費者選購體驗性產品時浮現，進一步正向影響消費者對於產品的態度，而且在性別一致性的兩種機制中，「自我一致性」（如傳播者/代言人與自身一致、產品與自身一致）比起「一致性效果」（外界的傳播者/產品一致）的機制，更能顯著影響消費者的商品態度。不過，一旦消費者主觀感知到性別一致的情形存在，無論是何種機制、何種產品屬性，皆能有效影響消費者的口碑說服效果。 　　上述的研究結果可以提供給未來欲透過口碑工具，邀請特定口碑寫手或消費者於試用產品後討論引起注意的廠商，在策略擬定之參考。建議行銷人員規劃行銷手法時多考慮「性別一致」引發之影響，讓消費者提升對於產品的態度與行為。

O mercado cinematográfico pode ser caracterizado como uma indústria de entretenimento com a produção de bens de informação que são também bens de experiência, cuja qualidade só é conhecida após o consumo. Deste modo, a revisão crítica se torna importante para induzir seu consumo, fornecendo previamente algum grau de informação sobre a qualidade do bem. Segue-se o trabalho de Reinstein e Snyder (2005) para determinar se as revisões críticas conduzidas por consumidores e por críticos profissionais online afetam o tempo de exibição de filmes no mercado americano de cinema, medido em quantidades de semanas, conforme modelos de duração/sobrevivência na literatura. Para esta finalidade foi gerado, a partir de sites de cinemas americanos (Box Office Mojo e Rotten Tomatoes), um banco de dados extremamente rico com informações semanais de todos os filmes disponíveis no cinema americano de 2004 a 2015. Especificamente, investigou-se os efeitos das revisões críticas de críticos profissionais de primeira linha (Tops) e de consumidores, conforme a média das notas atribuídas na semana de lançamento de cada filme. No que se refere à avaliação dos consumidores foi aplicada a computação afetiva, que reconhece o sentimento e a emoção em suas resenhas online para captar o efeito boca a boca potencializado pelas mídias sociais e fornecendo, portanto, uma análise mais profunda do boca a boca online. O estudo controla por possíveis problemas de endogeneidade decorrente de simultaneidade, usando as críticas somente antes e durante a semana de lançamento dos filmes. Os resultados sugerem que os críticos profissionais exercem grande influência no tempo de duração dos filmes em cartaz, bem como a positividade dos consumidores em relação ao filme. No entanto, o efeito dos críticos profissionais é em média 3 vezes maior do que dos consumidores. Adicionalmente, pode-se observar que algumas emoções afetam a expectativa de vida dos filmes a depender do gênero do mesmo / The movie market may be considered as entertainment industry, which produces experience goods that is also information goods, whose quality is only known only after consumption. Thus, critical reviews becomes important to induce consumption, since it provides some level of information about product quality. We follow Reinstein and Snyder (2005) works in order to determine if experts and consumers online critical reviews affect the survival time of movies at the American movie market, measured by number of weeks, according to survival analysis models in the literature. For this purpose, an extremely rich database with weekly information on all the films available in American cinema from 2004 to 2015 was generated from American movie sites (Box Office Mojo and Rotten Tomatoes). Specifically, we investigate the effects of critical reviews from top professionals and from consumers, according to the average ratings assigned in each movie\'s release week. As far as consumer assessment was concerned, affective computing was applied, which recognizes the sentiment (sentiment analysis) and emotion (emotion mining) in their online reviews to capture the word-of-mouth effect boosted by social media. The study controls for possible problems of endogeneity due to simultaneity, using the criticisms before and during the week of release of the films. The results suggest that the professional critics exert a great influence on the duration of the films in exhibition, as well as the positivity of the consumers in relation to the film. Thus, the effect of professionals are 5 times greater, generally, than the effect of the consumer critics. Additionally, it can be observed that some emotions affect movie life expectancy depending on the its genre

O mercado cinematográfico pode ser caracterizado como uma indústria de entretenimento com a produção de bens de informação que são também bens de experiência, cuja qualidade só é conhecida após o consumo. Deste modo, a revisão crítica se torna importante para induzir seu consumo, fornecendo previamente algum grau de informação sobre a qualidade do bem. Segue-se o trabalho de Reinstein e Snyder (2005) para determinar se as revisões críticas conduzidas por consumidores e por críticos profissionais online afetam o tempo de exibição de filmes no mercado americano de cinema, medido em quantidades de semanas, conforme modelos de duração/sobrevivência na literatura. Para esta finalidade foi gerado, a partir de sites de cinemas americanos (Box Office Mojo e Rotten Tomatoes), um banco de dados extremamente rico com informações semanais de todos os filmes disponíveis no cinema americano de 2004 a 2015. Especificamente, investigou-se os efeitos das revisões críticas de críticos profissionais de primeira linha (Tops) e de consumidores, conforme a média das notas atribuídas na semana de lançamento de cada filme. No que se refere à avaliação dos consumidores foi aplicada a computação afetiva, que reconhece o sentimento e a emoção em suas resenhas online para captar o efeito boca a boca potencializado pelas mídias sociais e fornecendo, portanto, uma análise mais profunda do boca a boca online. O estudo controla por possíveis problemas de endogeneidade decorrente de simultaneidade, usando as críticas somente antes e durante a semana de lançamento dos filmes. Os resultados sugerem que os críticos profissionais exercem grande influência no tempo de duração dos filmes em cartaz, bem como a positividade dos consumidores em relação ao filme. No entanto, o efeito dos críticos profissionais é em média 3 vezes maior do que dos consumidores. Adicionalmente, pode-se observar que algumas emoções afetam a expectativa de vida dos filmes a depender do gênero do mesmo / The movie market may be considered as entertainment industry, which produces experience goods that is also information goods, whose quality is only known only after consumption. Thus, critical reviews becomes important to induce consumption, since it provides some level of information about product quality. We follow Reinstein and Snyder (2005) works in order to determine if experts and consumers online critical reviews affect the survival time of movies at the American movie market, measured by number of weeks, according to survival analysis models in the literature. For this purpose, an extremely rich database with weekly information on all the films available in American cinema from 2004 to 2015 was generated from American movie sites (Box Office Mojo and Rotten Tomatoes). Specifically, we investigate the effects of critical reviews from top professionals and from consumers, according to the average ratings assigned in each movie\'s release week. As far as consumer assessment was concerned, affective computing was applied, which recognizes the sentiment (sentiment analysis) and emotion (emotion mining) in their online reviews to capture the word-of-mouth effect boosted by social media. The study controls for possible problems of endogeneity due to simultaneity, using the criticisms before and during the week of release of the films. The results suggest that the professional critics exert a great influence on the duration of the films in exhibition, as well as the positivity of the consumers in relation to the film. Thus, the effect of professionals are 5 times greater, generally, than the effect of the consumer critics. Additionally, it can be observed that some emotions affect movie life expectancy depending on the its genre