O imperativo mais urgente de nosso século atual é a preocupação com o meio ambiente. Sustentabilidade pode ser considerada como a solução chave para este problema universal. Vivendo em uma sociedade de consumo significa que as ações dos seres humanos sempre têm uma espécie de impacto sobre o nosso futuro comum. Isso, juntamente com as taxas de população em rápido crescimento, implica que algo tem que mudar o padrão de consumo em o mundo todo. Em geral, as economias emergentes são aqueles que, deste ponto de vista, assustam mais, devido as suas urbanização cada vez mais em aumento, juntamente com os seus enorme tamanho e o seus desenvolvimento industrial retrógrado e privo de regulamentações. Especificamente o Brasil, com o seu crescimento exponencial e as suas dimensões continentais, representa uma das maiores forças de consumo do planeta. Porque os estudos comportamentais sobre o consumo ecológico neste país concentram-se principalmente em alimentos orgânicos, este presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o mercado para produtos sustentáveis no cluster de Porto Alegre. Precisamente, o padrão de consumo em direção a detergentes para a roupa são inferidos, a fim de (a) identificar a oferta de detergentes para a roupa no mercado; (b) compreender como é que ocorre o processo de compra de detergentes para a roupa; e (c) definir valores e atitudes que impulsionam o comportamento dos consumidores verdes, investigando as possibilidades de penetração de um produto Italiano verde. Este trabalho é divulgado através de uma triangulação desenvolvida em três fases diferentes. A partir da delimitação teórica do comportamento do consumidor e do consumo verde, segue uma pesquisa qualitativa, de modo secundária como primária – através de entrevistas semiestruturadas – apoiadas por uma pesquisa quantitativa de Schwartz com o objetivo de inferir valores e atitudes dos segmentos de interesse. Resultados da pesquisa mostram um mercado que estaria pronto para considerar um produto mais verde entre as ofertas, quer devido à consciência ambiental, ou ligeiro desagrado da qualidade média do produto já comercializado. Ao mesmo tempo, os consumidores não estaria prontos para enfrentar um trade-off muito mais alto entre o preço e a qualidade, e estaria bastante inclinado a uma democratização da oferta verde. Este estudo melhora o conhecimento sobre o peso de essa consciência ecologia que, juntamente com considerações sociais e valores pessoais, influenciam o padrão de consumo, oferecendo uma descrição de um mercado potencial para detergentes de roupa ecológica. / The most urgent imperative of our current century is the concern about the Environment. Sustainability may be considered as the key solution to this universal problem. Living in a consumer society means that humans’ actions always have a sort of impact on what will be our common future. This, together with the fast growing population rates, implies that something have to change in the pattern of consumption worldwide. In general, emerging economies are those that from this point of view scare the most, due to their increasingly augmenting urbanization, together with their enormous size and their retrograde industrial development and regulations. Specifically Brazil, with its exponential growth and its continental dimensions represents one of the biggest consumption forces of the planet. Since behavioral studies among ecological consumption in this country are mainly concentrated on organic food, this present work aims to analyze the market toward sustainable products in the cluster of Porto Alegre. Precisely, the pattern of consumption toward laundry detergents are inferred, in order to (a) identify the offer of laundry detergents in the market; (b) understand how does the purchasing process of laundry detergents occurs; and (c) define values and attitudes that drives green consumers’ behavior, investigating the chances of penetration of an Italian green product. This work is disclosed through a triangulation of three different phases. Starting from the delimitation of the theoretical background both of consumer behavior and green consumption, it was then followed a qualitative research, either secondary and primary – via semi-structured interviews – supported by a quantitative Schwartz survey with the aim of inferring values and attitudes of the segments of interest.

The study examined gender differences in fashion consumption in reflecting to retailing-store characteristics. Observation was conducted in the five different retailing-stores to notice various store displays and consumer behaviors between women and men. Information from various sources including journals, books, stores’ magazines, and stores’ websites were used as additional data in complementing to observation technique. The study found that female were gather shoppers who went shopping for reasons of enjoyment and relaxation. Thus, they like spending time browsing for comparing price, products, and quality. On the other hand, men were hunter shoppers who went shopping for need-driven. As a result, men preferred shop where they can search for their intended items easily. Similarly, shop characteristics were found to reflect and adapt to consumer behavior by gender. / Program: Magisterutbildning i företagsekonomi

Purpose: The purpose with this paper is to improve the understanding for companies on what influences female Chinese consumers in the age 20-25 year old to buy luxury goods. Research question: What behaviors do 20-25 year old Chinese women consumers have in relationship to luxury goods? Method: The study is mainly consisting of a quantitative web-survey that consists of 100 respondents. The survey was addressed to young women that came from China, in the ages 20-25 year old. It was of interest to get answers both from young women that are luxury consumers and from those who are not, in order to get a hint of how they relate to luxury goods in general. As a complement to the survey, a qualitative focus group interview was made with five young Chinese women in the age 22-24 year old. Theory: The theoretical framework includes theories about; luxury, reference group, family, roles and status, motivation, attitudes and beliefs and the buyer decision process. Conclusion: The results show that young Chinese women’s consumer behavior is in some aspect in the process of change. For example, they now want to stand out, but subconsciously they still act upon what earlier theories have claimed, to be like everyone else, because it is firmly rooted in their behaviors. This shows that they are in the process of a behavioral change towards acting more individualistic. Young Chinese women's consumer behavior is characterized by the fact that they have a positive attitude towards buying more luxury goods in the future, both for personal reasons but also because it will help their career and make them seem more professional. Although, they consider there to be some risks with buying luxury goods, both social and economic. Concerning the buyer decision process they research about the product, either by reading magazines looking on the Internet or talking to their friends. Today almost every purchase, regarding luxury, is planned and often based on personal opinions but sometimes with the regards of others opinions, like friends and family. / Program: Master in Fashion Management with specialisation in Fashion Marketing and Retailing

Den rådande klimatsituationen utgör, på grund av föroreningar i naturen, ett hot mot jordens fortlevnad, det kan främst påvisas genom de klimatförändringar som blir allt mer tydliga i världen. Samhällets negativa påverkan på jordens klimat sätter press på samhällsaktörer, varav en av dem är handelssektorn. Livsmedelsbranschen är den aktör som idag arbetar mest med ansvarsfullt företagande. Fokus läggs främst på ekologiska produkter, miljömärkningar samt energieffektivt arbete.Trots satsningar på ekologiska livsmedelsalternativ samt egna märkesvaror med ekologisk inriktning råder idag kunskapsbrist bland konsumenter. Den finansiella aspekten utgör, tillsammans med tid- och bekvämlighetsaspekter, de huvudsakliga påverkansfaktorerna på konsumenters medvetna och omedvetna beteende. En välkänd paradox som förknippas med konsumtionen av de ekologiska livsmedlen är att trots ökande positiva attityder och intresse för ekologi bland konsumenter, så ökar inte försäljningen av ekologiska matvaror i lika stor grad. På det sättet uppstår ett gap mellan konsumenters önskvärda beteende och deras praktiska handling.Syftet med studien är att förstå vilka fenomen som styr konsumenters konsumtion av ekologiska dagligvaror. Forskningsfrågan är: Vilka drivkrafter skulle kunna leda till ökad konsumtion av ekologiska matvaror? För att kunna besvara forskningsfrågan har en växelverkan mellan teori och empiri förekommit. Vårt empiriska material har samlats in genom att kombinera tre insamlingstekniker: semistrukturerade intervjuer med verksamma forskare inom ekologi-, lantbruks- och livsmedelsbranschen, strukturerade intervjuer med konsumenter i tre av Sveriges största butikskedjor samt observationer i dessa butiker.De slutsatser som vi har kunnat dra är att ökad tillgänglighet, lägre prisnivåer samt tydlig information kring de ekologiska produkternas innebörd kan ge upphov till ökad uppmärksamhet från konsumenters sida och därmed ökad konsumtion av de ekologiska alternativen. Med hjälp av välutformad produktsegmenteringsstrategi samt ökade marknadsföringsåtgärder skulle både de köpstarka och mindre köpstarka kundsegmenten kunna tilltalas, detta genom att öka de ekologiska produkternas tillgänglighet.Det forskningsfält som kan undersökas vidare är hur en prissättningsstrategi skulle kunna täcka både köpstarka samt lågprisintresserade kundgrupper. Utöver detta kan de ekologiska produkternas framställningsprocesser undersökas, samt identifiering av marknadsföringsmedel inriktad på ekologiska livsmedel. / Program: Civilekonomprogrammet

In this dissertation, I explore determinants, and some consequences, of persistence in consumer search. Many prominent thinkers have considered the problem of search in terms of optimal solutions, or their heuristic approximations. In the following research, I explore persistence in search not merely as a function of economic calibration, but rather as an outcome determined by both cognitive and motivational processes. I provide evidence that normative models of search are insufficient to explain the behavior of those whom I study. Instead, I show cases in which search persistence is a function of prior behavior (Chapter 1) and prior beliefs (Chapter 2). I further propose a cognitive model of price search behavior (Chapter 3) that can predict many of the observed behaviors that would be considered mistakes in normative price search frameworks (e.g., variance neglect, reference point effects, local contrast effects).

This dissertation consists of three papers. A common feature of these papers is the interest in how externalities affect consumers and firms’ behavior. In the first paper, I study one type of contractual externalities called exclusive dealing, whereby one firm cannot deal with the competitors of the other. More specifically, I propose and estimate an empirical structural model to investigate the effects on prices of upstream mergers in markets with exclusive dealing contracts. The second paper is concerned with markets for a good with network externalities, i.e. a good that generates higher utility the higher the number of consumers purchasing it. The third paper studies externalities of investments on quality improvement. When more than one firm is active, the product improvement externality occurs because as firms chose different quality levels, competition is relaxed and consumers get some consumer surplus from product variety. In the case of winner-take-all markets, the business-stealing externality occurs because as one firm invests in quality upgrade, the competitors become more likely to lose all customers. The first chapter examines the incentives for price increase in upstream mergers when the supplier has a network of exclusive dealers (ED). The incentives explored in this paper come from changes in the threat point of the bargaining between the supplier and exclusive retailers. The bargaining power of the exclusive dealer comes from local market power of the dealer or due to reputation aspects (when dealers know that the supplier behaves opportunistically after the ED contract is signed, they will be reluctant in becoming exclusive of that supplier or renewing the contract). The change in the threat point post merger is due to the larger network of exclusive retailers, which enables the merged supplier to recapture a larger portion of the consumers that will be diverted from any specific exclusive dealer in case of disagreement on the wholesale price negotiation. The empirical application explored in this paper uses a unique and comprehensive dataset from the Brazilian fuel industry, with information that includes retail and wholesale prices as well as quantities at the station level. Aside from the good quality, this dataset is adequate for the intended analysis because in Brazil fuel stations can either operate independently (in which case they can purchase from any distributor) or sign an ED contract, when they can only purchase from a specific distributor. Moreover, the data spam a period that includes an important merger. I estimate the model using pre-merger data and simulate the effects of combining the networks of exclusive dealers of the merging companies. The simulation shows that the incentives for price increase are sizable, and the mechanism studied in the paper captures a large fraction of the actual price increase observed in the data. The second chapter, joint with Ilwoo Hwang, studies adoption and pricing when consumers can delay their purchase of a good with network effects. In those cases, price alone does not convey sufficient information for consumers to make their purchase decision and they need to infer about current and future adoption in order to make their decisions. This feature implies that some consumers might find optimal to delay their purchases in order to make their decisions better informed about the success of the network. The multiplicity of equilibria that is typical in the coordination game played by consumers implies that the demand is not well defined for a given price, creating a problem for the firm's pricing decision. We consider a two-period model in which a monopolist sets prices and consumers can delay their purchases to the second period when they will receive information about early adoption. The dynamic coordination problem with endogenous delayed purchases is modeled as a global game, for which we derive conditions for uniqueness of equilibrium. The model is capable of exploring many issues in the economics of network effects such as introductory pricing and early critical mass for platform survival. Our specification nests the pure durables goods and herding models. Numerical results illustrate the amplitude of possible outcomes in the dynamic model with delay. Substantial differences can arise in terms of pricing, adoption and profits when we compare the full specification with multiple benchmarks. In the third chapter, joint with Michael Riordan, we develop a duopoly model of product quality competition that focuses on how information structure determines equilibrium outcomes. When we introduce private and correlated signals about the fundamental uncertainty about quality differences, each firm can form a more educated guess about what the opponent must be doing, which is the key for uniqueness of equilibria. Equilibrium product improvement decisions are unique if and only if market uncertainty is sufficiently high relative to strategic uncertainty, except in a non-generic special case. A unique equilibrium takes the form of threshold strategies, whereby each firm improves its product upon receiving a sufficiently favorable signal of brand advantage. We show that the unique equilibrium depends on the fundamentals as well as on investment costs and that the probability of miscoordination vanishes as strategic uncertainty decreases. In the type of competition studied here, firms have no incentive to choose the same quality as the competition arising in the marketplace would bring prices to equalize marginal cost. Interestingly, this information structure alleviates substantially the problem of miscoordination observed in the no “information game” and also dominates the complete information game for a large range of parameters in the model.

This thesis studies three game theoretic models of pricing, in which a seller is interested in optimally pricing and allocating her product or service to a market of agents, in order to maximize her revenue. These markets feature a large number of self-interested agents, who are generally heterogeneous with respect to some payoff relevant feature, e.g., willingness to pay when agents are consumers or private cost when agents are firms. Agents strategically interact with one another, and their actions affect other agents' payoffs, either directly through social influence or competition, or indirectly through a review system. The seller has demand uncertainty and strives to optimize expected discounted revenues. I use either a mean-field approximation or a continuum of agents assumption to reduce the complexity of the problems and provide crisp characterizations of system aggregates and equilibrium policies. Chapter 2 considers the problem of an information provider who sells information products, such as demand forecasts, to a market of firms that compete with one another in a downstream market. We propose a general model that subsumes both price and quantity competition as special cases. We characterize the optimal selling strategy and find that it depends on both mode and intensity of competition. Several important extensions to heterogeneous production costs, information quality discrimination, and information leakage through aggregate actions are studied. Chapter 3 considers the problem of optimally extracting a stream of revenues from a sequence of consumers, who have heterogeneous willingness to pay and uncertainty about the quality of the product being sold. Using an intuitive maximum likelihood procedure, we characterize the solution of consumers' quality estimation problem. Then, we use a mean-field approximation to characterize the transient dynamics of quality estimates and demand. These allow us to simplify and solve the monopolist's problem, and ultimately provide a characterization of her optimal pricing policy. Chapter 4 considers the problem of a seller who is interested in dynamically pricing her product when consumers' utility is influenced by the mass of consumers that have purchased in the past. Two scenarios are studied, one in which the monopolist has commitment power and one in which she does not. We characterize the optimal selling strategy under both scenarios and derive comparisons on equilibrium prices and demands. Our main result is a characterization of the value of price commitment as a function of the social influence level in the market.

Atualmente, a comunicação entre marcas e consumidores é um processo complexo. O excessivo volume de mensagens publicitárias leva à maior seletividade e menor sensibilidade a apelos persuasivos que, no passado, surtiam efeito. Assim, o monitoramento e uso de \"boca a boca\", considerado por consumidores um dos meios de comunicação mais confiável, torna-se fundamental. O estudo sobre a relação entre marcas, recomendação e decisões de consumo não é algo novo na literatura de marketing, porém, muito pouco se sabe sobre como tais construtos se relacionam em decisões que exigem diferentes níveis de cognição. Este foi o elemento direcionador deste trabalho que procura investigar o papel que a valência da recomendação e o estágio de maturidade de marcas apresentam em decisões de compra que exigem diferentes níveis de esforço cognitivo, assumindo a visão apresentada pelas teorias de duplo processo cognitivo. Com este propósito, foi desenvolvido um experimento com desenho fatorial completo, considerando a manipulação de três fatores de tratamento (valência da recomendação, maturidade de marca e tipo de decisão) de dois níveis (positiva ou negativa, madura ou nova, urgente ou planejada, respectivamente) e a avaliação de seus efeitos em intenção de compra (variável dependente). O procedimento de coleta envolveu o desenvolvimento de estímulos para a representação da combinação dos níveis dos tratamentos em oito celas de teste independentes (2³) e de um questionário de autopreenchimento pela Internet. Para a análise dos resultados, aplicaram-se modelos lineares generalizados para teste de cada uma das hipóteses de pesquisa. Os resultados mostram que, em situações de decisão urgente, nas quais o esforço cognitivo é menor, o efeito da valência da recomendação em intenção de compra é superior ao efeito da maturidade de uma marca. Por outro lado, em situações de decisão planejada, nas quais o esforço cognitivo é maior, o efeito da maturidade de uma marca em intenção de compra é superior ao efeito de valência da recomendação. Uma marca nova, que ainda está em processo de construção de sua imagem, sofreu maior efeito da valência de recomendação e, portanto, teve sua intenção de compra mais sensível a situações de decisão urgente. Para uma marca madura, observou-se que sua intenção de compra não varia entre situações de decisão urgente e planejada quando ocorre uma recomendação positiva. Porém, quando ocorreu uma recomendação negativa, houve maior sensibilidade e a intenção de compra por uma marca madura foi mais afetada em situações de decisão urgente do que planejada. Por fim, encontrou-se efeito interativo significativo entre valência da recomendação, maturidade da marca e tipo de decisão, o que validou a existência de cenários nos quais uma marca nova pode ter intenção de compra párea a uma marca madura. Estes resultados podem auxiliar no desenvolvimento de estratégias de comunicação de marketing, principalmente no que se refere ao uso e monitoramento de ações de \"boca a boca\" para a experimentação de uma marca nova ou proteção de uma marca madura. / Nowadays, the communication between brands and consumers is a complex process. The excessive amount of advertising creates higher selectivity and lower sensibility to persuasive messages that, in the past, have been effective. Then, monitoring and using the \"word-of-mouth\" (WOM), considered one of the most trustable media by consumers, became essential. The study about brands, WOM and their consequences to purchase decisions is not new to marketing literature; however, understanding how these constructs interact to each other at different levels of cognition has not been explored yet. Aiming to fulfill this gap, the present study was developed to investigate the effect of WOM valence and brand maturity level on purchase decisions taken at different levels of cognitive effort, assuming what is presented by dual-process cognitive theories. For this sake, an experiment was applied using a full-factorial design, considering the manipulation of three treatments/ independent variables (WOM valence, brand maturity level and type of purchase decision) of two levels each (positive or negative, mature or new, urgent or planned, respectively) and the analysis of their effects on purchase intention (dependent variable). An online questionnaire was applied for data collection in eight different and independent groups of test (2³). For testing each one of the research hypotheses, general linear models were applied. Results showed that, in an urgent decision, when the level of cognitive effort is lower, the effect of WOM valence in purchase intention is stronger than the effect of brand maturity level. On the other hand, in a planned decision, when the level of cognitive effort is higher, the effect of brand maturity level is stronger than the effect of WOM valence. A new brand, which is beginning to build its equity, was more affected by WOM valence, thus, its purchase intention was more sensible in urgent decisions. For a mature brand, when exposed to positive WOM, there was no difference in its purchase intention comparing both types of decision. Although, when a mature brand was exposed to negative WOM, there was a higher sensibility and its purchase intention was more affected in an urgent decision. Finally, the interactive effect among the three treatments was significant, validating the existence of scenarios where the purchase intention of a new brand is parity to a mature brand. These findings may help on the development of marketing communication strategies, mainly to what refers to the usage and monitoring of \"word-of-mouth\" for stimulating the trial of a new brand or the protection of a mature brand.

This thesis handles fundamental problems faced by retailers everyday: how do consumers make choices from an enormous variety of products? How to design a product portfolio to maximize the expected profit given consumers’ choice behavior? How to frame products if consumers’ choices are influenced by the display location? We solve those problems by first, constructing mathematical models to describe consumers’ choice behavior from a given offer set, i.e., consumer choice models; second, by designing efficient algorithms to optimally select the product portfolio to maximize the expected profit, i.e., assortment optimization. This thesis consists of three main parts: the first part solves assortment optimization problem under a consideration set based choice model proposed by Manzini and Mariotti (2014) [Manzini, Paola, Marco Mariotti. 2014. Stochastic choice and consideration sets. Econometrica 82(3) 1153-1176.]; the second part proposes an approximation algorithm to jointly optimize products’ selection and display; the third part works on optimally designing a product line under the Logit family choice models when a product’s utility depends on attribute-level configurations.

One fundamental problem in revenue management that arises in many settings including retail and display-based advertising is assortment planning. Here, the focus is on understanding how consumers select from a large number of substitutable items and identifying the optimal offer set to maximize revenues. Typically, for tractability, we assume a model that captures consumer preferences and focus on computing the optimal offer set. A significant challenge here is the lack of knowledge on consumer preferences. In this thesis, we consider the multinomial logit choice model, the most popular model for this application domain and develop tractable robust algorithms for assortment planning under uncertainty. We also quantify the fundamental performance limits from both computational and information theoretic perspectives for such problems. The existing methods for the dynamic problem follow ``estimate, then optimize'' paradigm, which require knowledge of certain parameters that are not readily available, thereby limiting their applicability in practice. We address this gap between theory and practice by developing new theoretical tools which will aid in designing algorithms that judiciously combine exploration and exploitation to maximize revenues. We first present an algorithm based on the principle of ``optimism under uncertainty'' that is simultaneously robust and adaptive to instance complexity. We then leverage this theory to develop a Thompson Sampling (TS) based framework with theoretical guarantees for the dynamic problem. This is primarily motivated by the growing popularity of TS approaches in practice due to their attractive empirical properties. We also indicate how to generalize the TS framework to design scalable dynamic learning algorithms for high-dimensional data and discuss empirical gains of such approaches from preliminary implementations on Flipkart, a large e-commerce firm in India.