situation in the interpretation

Many real world choices require consumers to make decisions after other choices or judgments. We show that prior choices, which activate and boost the self-concept, are likely to subsequently license more self-indulgent choices. We propose that licensing can operate through an expression of intent

This article presents an overview of psychologists ' appro.aches to cc:m-sumer choice and generates several hypotheses for studYing the choice process in different situations. BACKGROUND Unlike economists, psychologists have not been directly concerned with consumer behavior. Psy

© The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Aim To estimate the price sensitivity of consumer choice of health insurance firm. Method Using paneldata of the flows of insured between pairs of Dutch sickness funds during the period 1993–2002, we

Consumers’choices depend on preferences over outcomes and beliefs about how their choices map into these outcomes. While economic models typically assume some form of rational expectations or "perfect beliefs, ” in reality consumers are often ill-informed or confused. In this paper, I elicit

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Abstract A literal interpretation of neo-classical consumer theory suggests that the consumer solves a very complex problem. In the presence of indivisible goods, the consumer problem is NP-Hard, and it appears unlikely that it can be optimally solved by humans. An alternative approach

to spend too much time making each selection. To solve this decision problem consumers need to per-form a dynamic search over the set of feasible items under conditions of extreme time pressure and choice overload. This gives rise to several basic questions which are studied in this paper: (i) What

People are frequently faced with making a new choice decision after a preferred option becomes unavailable. Prior research on the attraction effect has demonstrated how the introduction of an option into a choice set increases the share of one of the original options. The authors examine

Political scientists are often rather surprised when they first hear that shopping can be participation in politics. We react this way because we are taught that the political system is the focus of citizen involvement in politics. Our defini-tions of political participation reflect this understanding: "those voluntary ac-tivities by which members of a society share in the selection of rulers and, directly or indirectly, in the formation of public policy " (McClosky 1968,252), and "politiskt deltagande innebär deltagande i aktiviteter som har till syfte eller resultat att utöva inflytande på de politiska myndigheternas beslut, antingen direkt genom att påverka beslutsprocessen inom ett bestämt område eller indi-rekt genom att påverka valet av politiska representanter " (Togeby 1997,219). These definitions form the basis of our empirical work on political participa-tion (for an overview see Teorell 2001). This article argues that under certain conditions shopping for services and material goods is political participation. It starts with a definition of political consumerism, continues with a section on historical and contemporary exam-