****APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS****
TOC: Global Economics and Management Review (GEMRev)
GEMRev, Issue 1 (2013), is available online
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/23401540
Modeling the Forming of Public Opinion: An approach from Sociophysics
Serge Galam
This paper reviews a sociophysics two-state model for opinion forming
that has proven heuristic power. The dynamics are driven by repeated
small-group discussions; within each group, a local majority rule is
applied to update the opinions of agents. Iterating the dynamics leads
towards one of two opposite attractors at which every agent shares the
same opinion. The successful attractor is a function of the initial
support with respect to a certain threshold, the value of which depends
on the size distribution of the local update groups. While odd-sized
groups yield a threshold at fifty percent, even-sized groups, which
allow the inclusion of doubt in the case of an opinion tie, produce a
threshold shift toward either one of the two attractors, giving rise to
minority opinion spreading. In addition, agents can be heterogeneous in
their cognitive nature, obeying different rules to update their opinion.
While floater agents are open to changing their mind, contrarians chose
to oppose whatever opinion was held by the majority of agents in their
vicinity, and inflexibles never change their mind. Contrarians and
inflexibles have drastic and counter-intuitive effects on the opinion
dynamics. Beyond certain critical proportions, contrarians trigger an
upside change of the dynamics, making it threshold-less with only one
attractor at precisely 50/50 regardless of the initial conditions.
Inflexibles produce the same threshold-less dynamics, except with an
asymmetric single attractor that favors a specific opinion, even when
they start with very low support. The results are used to shed new and
unexpected light on controversial issues such as global warming.
Bricks or Clicks? Consumer Attitudes toward Traditional Stores and
Online Stores
Jacqueline J. Kacen, James D. Hess, and Wei-Yu Kevin Chiang
Determining what consumers value, and how online stores compare to
traditional stores on valued attributes is a necessary first step in
understanding the relative benefits of e-commerce. In this paper, we
measure consumers’ valuation of online stores compared to traditional
stores by measuring the consumers’ perceptions of the performance of
online stores on 18 attributes, as well as the importance of each of
those attributes. These individual perceptions and preferences from a
web-based and paper-based survey of 224 shoppers are combined in a
self-explicated multi-attribute attitude model. The findings show that,
overall, all product categories in our survey of online stores are less
acceptable than traditional stores. Online stores are perceived as
having competitive disadvantages with respect to shipping and handling
charges, exchange/refund policy for returns, providing an interesting
social or family experience, helpfulness of salespeople, post-purchase
service, and uncertainty about getting the right item. The advantages
that online stores have in areas such as brand-selection/variety and
ease of browsing do not entirely overcome the disadvantages listed
above.
The Empowered Customer: User-Generated Content and the Future of
Marketing
Matthew S. O’Hern and Lynn R. Kahle
The boundaries that traditionally delineated the roles of consumers and
firms are being blurred as users take on creative tasks that were
previously managed solely by commercial firms. This paper argues that
the user-generated content (UGC) created by these consumers represents a
profound shift of power from firms to consumers. In order to better
understand this changing landscape, as well as to distinguish the
various types of UGC in which customers most commonly engage, and
highlight the benefits and challenges associated with these types, we
present a new UGC typology that takes into account the objectives that
consumers pursue as well as the type of knowledge flow that is activated
when consumers produce UGC. We draw on existing literature and use
illustrative examples to explicate these UGC types and explore the
implications of UGC for marketing thought and practice.
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