Topic: Consumer Behavior
Patience Is a Virtue — Up to a Certain Point
The happiest people are moderately patient, not into extreme delayed gratification
Our Flawed Pursuit of Happiness — and How to Get It Right
New approaches to spending and time-management examine how our actions do or don’t influence our level of satisfaction
Our Envy of Prospective Events Is Greater Than of Those Past
That’s helpful information in a social media world filled with friends who do enviable things
Origin Story of Products: To Consumers, How Big a Team Seems Right?
Buyers value team over individual effort but are sensitive to invention-by-committee
Opaque Pricing: How Sellers Can Gather Data and Boost Revenue
Websites peddle unnamed hotels and even cities; would you pay to omit one from the list?
Online Reviews: Should Sellers Show All or a Subset Relevant to You?
Most sellers do one or the other, but giving shoppers both might lift sales
Online Reviews Sway Experiential Purchases Less Than Those of Material Products
Reviews that explicitly talk about objective quality assessments are well received
Online Coupons Work in the Moment but Don’t Seem to Alter the Seller-Shopper Relationship
Studying 1 million Alibaba users, Hengchen Dai mostly confirms the transactional nature of internet retailing
Offering Free Upgrades Early to Manage Inventory and Boost Profit
Waiting until one product model runs out can be a costly mistake
Motivation to Begin or an Excuse to Slack Off?
Fresh-start dates can serve as either — it’s a two-way nudge
Motivating Households in India to Reduce Energy Consumption
The same message that works with U.S. households is effective in the developing world
Monetizing TV Content: What Binge Watchers Will and Won’t Do
Fandom doesn’t mean blindly following a franchise wherever it ventures or being a vocal cheerleader
Measuring the Impact of Currency Moves on Consumer Prices
It varies across goods and services and can be blunted by monetary policy
Luxury Goods: The Perils and Profits in Lower-Priced Markets
A study uses game theory to suggest when designer companies should license their names for down-market goods
Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics — and Data Visualization
How we interpret time-series data is dependent on the designer’s chosen format
Is Anyone Happy about the College Textbook Market?
Buyers find the tomes heavy, costly and too frequently revised, while sellers might like to kill the used book market entirely