No abstract

No abstract

As technology advances, new products (e.g., digital cameras, computer tablets) have become increasingly more complex. Researchers often face considerable challenges in understanding consumers' preferences for such products. The current research proposes an adaptive decompositional framework to elicit consumers' preferences for complex products. The proposed method starts with a collaborative-filtered initial part-worths, followed by an adaptive question selection process where fuzzy support vector machine active learning algorithm is used to adaptively refine the individual-specific preference estimate after each question. Our empirical and synthetic studies suggest that the proposed method performs well for product categories equipped with as many as 70 to 100 attribute levels, which is typically considered prohibitive for decompositional preference elicitation methods. In addition, we demonstrate that the proposed method provides a natural remedy for a long-standing challenge in adaptive question design by gauging the possibility of response errors on the fly and incorporating it into the survey design. This research also explores in a live setting how responses from previous respondents may be used to facilitate active learning of the focal respondent's product preferences. Overall, the proposed approach offers some new capabilities that complement existing preference elicitation methods, particularly in the context of complex products.

No abstract

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:198285 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate commitment escalation tendencies and magnitude in groups of entrepreneurship-minded decision makers. Design/methodology/approach -The paper uses a software-based management simulation to expose 447 graduate business students in the USA and India to research stimuli under conditions that resemble important aspects of entrepreneurs' business environment, such as a focus on overall firm performance. Unlike most previous escalation research that studied individuals, the primary unit of analysis is a three-person group. Findings -The paper demonstrates a positive relationship between the groups' entrepreneurial intentions and escalation magnitude. The paper also finds a direct relationship between sunk costs and subsequent investment amounts, suggesting an additional route through which sunk costs may impact escalation behavior -anchoring and insufficient adjustment. Practical implications -The authors hope that the findings will stimulate further research on commitment escalation modalities and mechanisms among entrepreneurship-minded decision makers and provide impetus for efforts to develop effective debiasing strategies. Originality/value -The study addresses a long-standing gap in entrepreneurship research, by demonstrating a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial intentions and escalation behaviors. Also noteworthy, the results are generated using a different research method (simulation) than the experimental approach used in most extant escalation research. As such, the exploration provides important triangulating evidence that is currently lacking from the rich escalation literature.