（一）

Speaker: David Ong, Assistant Professor of Economics, Peking University HSBC

Title 1: Can there ever be too many flavors of H?agen-Dazs? Revisiting Aversion to Variety

Time: 1:30-3:00pm, Mar. 21, 2012

Location: Room 215, New Building of GSM, Peking University

Abstract

A growing body of research in psychology and economics has attempted to demonstrate, contrary to rational choice theory, that agents can be averse to variety with consumer and financial products. Much of the literature was initiated by Iyengar & Lepper’s 2001 field experiment. They showed that people are more likely to visit a jam display, and more likely to purchase afterwards when it had fewer varieties. However, subsequent and many attempts at replication has yield mixed results. A meta-analysis of 63 studies with N=5,036 (Scheibenne, Greifender &Todd, 2010) showed a “mean effect size of virtually zero” and concluded that there was as yet no sufficient condition for variety aversion. We hypothesized that apparent variety aversion in consumer products was driven by heterogeneity in tastes where some products yielded different consumers negative utility ,ie., are disgusting, as rhubarb jam is to some people. Consumers being aware of such heterogeneity when presented with untried varieties would then react as if they were averse to variety. To test our hypothesis, we first surveyed 30 student subjects for levels of possible disgust in 6 product varieties. We then randomly chose 4 among these: chocolates, ice-cream, toilet paper and instant noodles. We then did a modified version of Iyengar and Lepper’s 2001 field experiment for these products in a large Chinese supermarket where we secretly observed the purchasing behavior of 1000+ consumers while we when faced with high and low variety treatments. Our results are consistent with our prediction. A regression of the aversion to variety treatment effect was largely explained by the anticipated level of disgust R^2=0.81. This suggests that negative utility may be the sufficient cause of apparent variety aversion. We propose a simple statistical model to explain our and prior results.

Title 2: Paying more to top up: an online field experiment on price dispersion

Abstract

We tested for price dispersion in an online field experiment on the world’s largest online market, taobao.com. We sold identical prepaid phone cards at identical stores simultaneously at different prices. Out of 662 sales, 102 were of the higher priced item. Hence, we showed that consumers will not always buy the lowest priced product, all else being equal. This finding contributes to the “online price dispersion” literature in several ways. We used identical products at identical stores except in name to rule out possible unobserved heterogeneity in prior empirical studies. The simplicity of our product also suggests that product complexity is not necessary for price dispersion. Since subjects did not know they were in an experiment, external validity was not an issue as with prior laboratory experiments.

(二)

Speaker: Junhong Chu

，Assistant Professor of NUS Business School, National University of Singapore

Title: Cumulative Advantage of Research Productivity: How Large Is It and Who Has It?

Time: 3:10-4:30pm, Mar. 21, 2012

Location: Room 215, New Building of GSM, Peking University

Abstract

The principle of cumulative advantage (CA) or success-breeds-success has been found to apply to the area of research productivity. This paper investigates the magnitudes, life-course changes, individual differences, determinants, and implications of cumulative advantage in the field of marketing. This study differs from the prior literature in that (1) it directly estimates cumulative advantage at individual level, (2) it accounts for diminishing returns of cumulative advantage, (3) it computes publishing capacity and simulates the head start effect, and (4) it examines differences across research areas, demographics, and cohorts of graduates. A significant CA effect is found for every researcher, but with diminishing returns. Researchers who see faster productivity growth in their early career years also tend to experience faster productivity decline in their late career years, and the correlation is particularly strong for tiered publications. The researchers have large publishing capacities, but the publishing potentials are generally far from being fully realized. Cumulative advantage of publishing generates a strong head start effect on publication in early career years. There exists substantial heterogeneity across researchers in their research ability, advantage accumulating and diminishing rates, and publishing capacity, and the main determinants of these differences are individual researcher’s type of research area, gender, PhD school rank, PhD training, and country of origin. However, contrary to the prior literature, cumulative advantage of publishing does not lead to growing inequality in productivity over academic age, although there are considerable differences across cohorts of doctoral graduates.

Welcome to attend!