This dissertation studies how institutions of higher education occupy a unique space that can add to the discourse of business studies by relating how consumers can simultaneously function as products. This is substantiated by defining the word "student" beyond the traditional meaning of a student as learner when considering the higher…

This dissertation investigates the effect of observational learning in crowdsourcing markets as a lens to identify appropriate mechanism(s) for sustaining this increasingly popular business model. Observational learning occurs when crowdsourcing participating agents obtain knowledge from signals they observe in the marketplace and incorporate such…

The behavioral perspective model's (BPM; Foxall, 1990) retailing literature is built on extensive empirical research and techniques that were originally refined in choice experiments in behavioral economics and behavior analysis, and then tested mostly on British consumer panel data. We test the BPM in the context of Norwegian retailing. This…

We consider a version of an optimal stopping problem, in which a customer is presented with a finite set of items, one by one. The customer is aware of the number of items in the finite set and the minimum and maximum possible value of each item, and must purchase exactly one item. When an item is presented to the customer, she or he observes its…

This dissertation studies consumer search behavior in markets where buyers have incomplete information about available goods, such as markets with many sellers or frequently changing prices. In these markets, consumers engage in costly search in order to collect information necessary for making a purchase. Our method of investigation combines…

Recommender systems aim to support users in their decision-making process while interacting with large information spaces and recommend items of interest to users based on preferences they have expressed, either explicitly or implicitly. Recommender systems are increasingly used with product and service selection over the Internet. Although…

A "humanitarian market" for off-grid renewable energy technologies for displaced populations in remote areas has emerged. Within this market, there are multiple stakeholder agendas. End-user needs and sustainable development goals are currently not considered through the customer-enterprise relationship and the applied product and…

This dissertation examines consumer behavior in different markets. Six different types of Utah snow skiers, namely, half day, local, multiday, college and K-12 students, and season ticket holders, are analyzed in the first paper to determine their demand response to changes in prices, income, weather, transportation costs, and particular days. A…

Presents a diagram for figuring the value of time into an individual's labor-supply decisions and the time intensiveness of the individual's consumption patterns. Seeks to make the integration of differing time values with leisure income choices more understandable for students. (DK)

This chapter introduces the key economic concepts, models, and methods that can help inform institutional research in higher education. (Contains 1 table and 9 figures.)

Aspects are summarized of a current approach to social indicator research and related problems in policy analysis generated by an interest in isolating major sources of variability in the generation of human welfare and developing indicators associated with welfare-generating processes. A set of models being developed for indicator research is…

Racial prejudice is said to influence strongly the locational decisions of households in urban areas. This paper introduces racial prejudice into a model of an urban area and derives several results about residential location. A previously developed long-run model of an urban area adds a locational dimension to a model of the housing market under…