Study on Formation and Change of Consumer Preference

本研究项目涉及到形成和变化。消费者偏好的实证和基于模拟的理论方法。首先，我关注了由消费者经验驱动的偏好形成/变化的内部方面，以及由消费者之间的社会互动驱动的偏好形成/变化的外部方面。前一研究通过对照实验考察了感知体验和语言体验对消费者偏好形成的影响。后者通过基于主体的建模解决了消费者偏好的异质性如何通过消费者的社会互动产生。为后一项研究准备的论文经审查后选出，并将出现在2006年世界社会模拟大会的会后会议上。此外，我正在研究具有特定特征的网络中的信息传染对偏好形成的影响。其次，我开发了几种量化方法来衡量消费者偏好的形成/变化。其中一种是测量包含非补偿规则的多阶段偏好决策的方法，另一种是使用MCMC方法测量个体层面偏好一致性的动态变化。我曾在学术会议上介绍过这些方法。此外，我正在研究测量社会互动对偏好形成的影响的方法。第三，我研究了营销政策对偏好形成/变化的影响。具体来说，我运用倾向得分法来检验电视广告对消费者选择的短期影响。这篇论文作为我们学院的讨论论文被归档，并提交给了一家学术期刊。另一方面，我在《信息处理》杂志上发表了一篇论文，讨论了以互联网为代表的最近IT运动中出现的长尾商业模型的含义，特别关注消费者偏好的变化。

This research project has dealt with the formation and change. of consumer preference by both empirical and simulation-based theoretical approaches.First, I focused the internal aspect of preference formation/change, driven by consumers' experiences, and also the external aspect of it, driven by social interaction among consumers. The former study examines the effects of perceptional and linguistic experiences on consumer preference formation via controlled experiments. The latter tackled how the heterogeneity in consumer preference would emerge through consumers' social interaction via agent-based modeling. The paper prepared for the latter study was selected by review and will appear in the post-proceedings of the World Congress of Social Simulation 06. Furthermore, I am working on the effects of information contagion on networks with specific characteristics on the formation of preference.Second, I have developed several quantitative methods to measure the formation/change of consumer preference. One of them is the method to measure multi-stage preferential decision making including a non-compensatory rule and another is to measure the dynamical change of preference consistency at the individual level using a MCMC approach. I had presented these methods in academic meetings. Moreover, I am working on the methods to measure the effects of social interaction on preference formation.Third, I have investigated the effects of marketing policies on the formation/change of preference. Specifically, I applied the Propensity Score method to test the short-term effect of TV advertising on consumer choice. The paper was documented as a discussion paper of our faculty and was submitted to an academic journal. On the other hand, I presented a paper in the journal of information processing, which argued the implications of the Long Tail business model emerging form recent IT movements, represented by Internet, in particular focusing on the change of consumer preference.