>
> ****APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS****
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> 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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