Choice Proliferation and Consumer Behavior                                   
Recent technological and regulatory changes have vastly increased the number of options available to customers in the marketplace in many product categories. An individual's behavior changes within a person depending upon the context during the day and across people type. This intra- and inter- consumer heterogeneity can be understood in terms of the different need states people experience in different contexts. An understanding and modeling of the interplay of consumer contexts and consumer need states is a key to understanding consumer behavior decisions. This understanding can help firms more effectively communicate and position their products.

Center Fellows explore how activities and time of the day drive need states, how the current need state and past usage behavior influence consumer buying habits. They can determine whether consumer preferences of daily activities can shed light on lifestyles and develop an understanding of how personal characteristics (demographics and lifestyle) influence the type of activities the individual engages in and the type of need states the individual develops. For example, our analysis can provide insights on whether an increase of a consumer’s preference on an activity will increase or decrease his/her preference on a particular need state and a product category.

Consumer Behavior in the Health & Pharmaceutical Sector
A major sector of the economy involves servicing the health-care needs of the population. The entire sector has undergone tremendous changes - from the time pressure on physicians to a greater desire for participation and control on the part of the patients, especially for the management of chronic diseases. Patients should have the opportunity to express the tradeoffs between conflicting considerations without having to express opinions about the treatments themselves. This requires an understanding of important concepts such as personalization.

One recent trend has been to allow for greater personalization of medical treatments based on the patient's perspectives (especially for the treatment of chronic diseases). Center Fellows explore the benefits of allowing patients to be active participants in the choice between medically feasible options in areas such as patient satisfaction in the treatment decision-making process.

Public policy experts interested in reducing drug consumption would like to understand whether individuals progress sequentially from the use of relatively mild drugs to stronger drugs. Researchers at the Center study this aspect of behavior.

Customer Behavior in Technology Markets
Given the breadth and complexity of product and service offerings in the IT markets, there is increasing emphasis on marketing based on solutions. The complexity of solutions marketing is characterized by ambiguous preferences and further complicated by the presence of multiple decision-makers each with differing behavioral traits, purchase preferences and requirements. Each decision-maker has different preferences and these vary according to the type of solution offered. Center Fellows research is becoming more important than ever for IT companies to better understand these differences.

Managers seek to gain insights about the underlying preferences of customers, their sensitivity to different elements of the marketing mix and the switching behavior across brands. A fundamental aspect of a firm’s long-term market success relies on its customer’s satisfaction and loyalty as evidenced through repeated purchases and greater future share of wallet. Center Fellows strive to better understand the drivers of customer satisfaction, repurchase, and future share of wallet through their research.

Customer Behavior in Retail Outlets
Changes, such as those created via the internet, have had a profound impact in retail markets. The number of options customers can consider on the internet for a given need tends to be far greater than it is in the traditional marketplace. As a result, new services, some of which are in transition, allow customers greater control over how options are represented, how new information is acquired, and hence how customers choose between many alternatives that potentially differ on a large number of dimensions. Marketers need to better understand what draws potential customers to their website. Center Fellows work for an improved understanding of customer behavior under these new conditions and gain knowledge about the sensitivity of choices to changes.

Customer Behavior in Financial Services
It is important for marketers and policymakers to understand how customers cope with the proliferation of alternatives in the marketplace might affect behavior. The implication is especially severe in financial services, such as for a customer who is required to plan his/her own savings. Center Fellows explore questions pertaining to the effect of very large choice sets on customer choice as well as methods for structuring information presentation to facilitate choices. The increase in options in the marketplace has created a need for personalization. Center Fellows explore the attractiveness of alternative methods to identify customer preferences including the consequence for customer satisfaction under alternative personalization systems.