Classification of human decision behavior: finding modular decision rules with genetic algorithms
GECCO '05 Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
The impact of search engine optimization on online advertising market
ICEC '06 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Electronic commerce: The new e-commerce: innovations for conquering current barriers, obstacles and limitations to conducting successful business on the internet
Optimal strategy for time-limited sequential search
Computers in Biology and Medicine
Management Science
Buyer Search Costs and Endogenous Product Design
Marketing Science
Marketing and Designing Transaction Games
Marketing Science
EditorialAre Consumers Rational? Experimental Evidence?
Marketing Science
Motivation for using search engines: A two-factor model
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Timing of Adaptive Web Personalization and Its Effects on Online Consumer Behavior
Information Systems Research
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We study sequential search behavior in a generalized "secretary problem" in which a single object is to be selected from a set ofn alternatives. Alternatives are inspected in a random order, one at a time, and only the rank order of the current alternative relative to the ones that have already been observed can be ascertained. At each period, the consumer may either accept the current alternative, continue to search and pay a fixed cost, or recall an alternative that has already been inspected. A recalled alternative is assumed to be available with a known probability. The consumer's goal is to select the overall best alternative from the fixed set.We describe the results of an experiment designed to test the optimal model and compare it to a behavioral decision model that incorporates local patterns of the observed sequence. Both set size and search cost are manipulated experimentally in a 2 x 2 factorial design. Our results show that cost and set size affect the amount of search in the predicted direction. However, in the two no-cost conditions subjects search too little in comparison to the optimal model, whereas in the two cost conditions they search too much. The behavioral decision rule that we propose provides a possible account for the observed pattern of the behavioral regularities.