Download or read book Essays on Time varying Consumer Preferences written by Sŏng-ho Pak and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consumer preferences are changing over time. In this dissertation, we provide three studies regarding changes in consumer preferences and methods of modeling time-varying preferences. In Chapter 1, we propose a Simulated Maximum Likelihood estimation method for the random coefficient logit model using aggregate data, accounting for heterogeneity and endogeneity. Our method allows for two sources of randomness in observed market shares - unobserved product characteristics and sampling error. Because of the latter, our method is suitable when sample sizes underlying the shares are finite. We show that the proposed method provides unbiased and efficient estimates of demand parameters. We also obtain endogeneity test statistics as a byproduct, including the direction of endogeneity bias. The model can be extended to incorporate Markov regime-switching dynamics in parameters and is open to other extensions based on Maximum Likelihood. The benefits of the proposed approach are achieved by assuming normality of the unobserved demand attributes, an assumption that imposes constraints on the types of pricing behaviors that are accommodated. However, we find in simulations that demand estimates are fairly robust to violations of these assumptions. We propose a structural model of market evolution and apply the proposed model to the South Korean cigarette market data in Chapter 2. In the South Korean cigarette market, consumers have shown dramatic changes in their cigarette preferences. While most consumers smoked high-tar cigarettes ten years ago, now most consumers prefer low-tar cigarettes. Another interesting trend in this market is Given the strong dynamics in the growing popularity of super-slim cigarettes. preferences, we raise two critical questions - 1) what are the sources of preference change, and 2) how does the firm (KT&G Corporation, a de-facto monopolist in the market) react to these preference changes. We answer these questions using a unique In the proposed demand structural model of consumer demand and firm behavior. model, evolution of consumers' preferences is driven by an exogenous effect and a new product introduction effect. On the one hand, the increasing preference for low- tar cigarettes can be explained by consumers' growing heath consciousness, an exogenous effect. Due to stringent government restrictions on promotion and advertising of tobacco products, new product introduction is an important marketing instrument for KT&G. We hypothesize that a new product carries critical This is the information that subsequently influences consumer preferences. introduction effect. We propose an aggregate random coefficient logit model wherein the parameters evolve as a function of the introduction and exogenous effects. This model allows us to separate the two effects and examine their relative significance. Another key research question we study is how the firm reacts to the To answer this question, we build two supply side models. preference changes. First, we specify the firm's pricing model which elucidates the influence of the timevarying preferences on the firm's pricing decisions. Second, we model the firm's decisions regarding new product design and introduction. This model clarifies the firm's decision process regarding the new product under the time-varying consumer preferences. This study provides valuable insights into the sources of preference Also, it changes, and how firms' decisions shape the fundamentals of the market. sheds light on the role and the value of new products design and introduction. proposed model can help a firm develop a new product strategy that will move consumer preferences in a preferred direction. In many categories consumers display cyclical buying: they repeatedly The purchase in the category for several periods, followed by several periods of not buying. One possible explanation for such cyclicality is the joint effect of habit and boredom on repeated purchasing. In Chapter 3, we propose a Markov regime-switching random coefficient logit model to represent these behaviors as stochastic switching between high and low category purchase tendencies. The main feature of the proposed model is that it divides the stream of purchase decisions of a consumer into distinct regimes with different parameter values that characterize high versus low purchase tendencies. In an empirical application of the model to purchases of yogurt-buying households we find that as many as 40.8% display cyclicality between high and low yogurt purchasing tendencies. We show (via simulation) that alternating between high and low purchase tendencies corresponds with changing levels of consumer inventory in a substitute category. If one ignores this phenomenon, a correlation between yogurt inventory and the unexplained part (or error term) in utility arises leading to biased estimates. Predictions from the proposed model track observed yogurt purchases of households over time closely, and the model also fits better than three benchmark models. Also, we show that cyclicality in buying has a key implication for a firm's price promotion strategies: a price reduction that is offered to a household during its high purchasing tendency period will result in greater increases in sales than one that is offered during its low purchasing period. This opens up a new dimension for enhancing the effectiveness of promotions - customized timing of price reductions.

Download or read book Three Essays on Structural State dependent Marketing Variables written by Roozbeh Irani Kermani and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation contains three essays. The first essay studies the accuracy of the measurement methods of brand loyalty. Accurately modeling and measuring a brand loyalty parameter can drastically affect the measurement of consumer impacts and welfare in brand-choice models. The most well-known method for brand loyalty estimation uses a households shopping history and accounts for habit formation via a smoothing parameter that represents the weight given to a households recent decisions in comparison to its distant shopping history. In this paper, we introduce a method that is able to estimate time-varying smoothing parameters for heterogeneous households. I use the Nielsen Homescan dataset for the U.S. beer market and calculate this smoothing parameter for American households during the years 2009-2011. My results show that the smoothing parameter varies significantly not only among households but also for a single household over the time, and that this variation is partially explained by observed household characteristics. I then incorporate a brand-loyalty index based on this method into a brand-choice model of the American beer market and show that our method improves the estimation results. To better understand the relationship between variety seeking and brand loyalty and to develop a more accurate brand choice model, the second essay introduces a new index for variety seeking. Consumers tendency to substitute different types of the same product in their baskets or search for ideal bliss point via diversification is generally regarded as variety-seeking behavior, and researchers most often operationalize this concept by observing product-switching behavior from one purchase occasion to another. What all variety-seeking measurement models have in common is that they operationalize this behavior by observing shopping patterns at the brand level. Thus, variety seeking is the negation of brand loyalty. In the second essay, I propose to generalize the operational concept of variety seeking by focusing on the differences among the product attributes that underlie the brand differences. I construct a variety-seeking index that measures variety via relative Euclidian distances in attribute space. Because a brand identifier could therefore be just one of several product attributes, a more traditional definition of variety seeking based only on brands would be a special case of this new, more general, variety-seeking index. My results show that adding this index to the brand choice model enhances the explanatory power of the model and improves estimation and analysis of consumer preferences. In the third essay, I investigate how mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. beer market affect brand loyalty and variety seeking using the two generalized definitions that I propose in the first two essays. More specifically, I propose to examine how brand-loyalty and variety-seeking indexes change before and after two major mergers during a 5-year period (2004-2009) while controlling for a large suite of fixed effects. Therefore, this analysis would enable me, in a qualitative way, to see how merger and acquisition activity affects underlying preferences.

Download or read book Three Essays on Consumer Behavior and Asset Prices written by Jeon-Hyeok Cho and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays in Operations and Marketing written by Te Ke and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My thesis consists of three essays in the field of operations management and marketing. In the first essay, I study the problem of consumer search for information on multiple products. When a consumer considers purchasing a product in a product category, the consumer can gather information sequentially on several products. At each moment the consumer can choose which product to gather more information on, and whether to stop gathering information and purchase one of the products, or to exit market with no purchase. Given costly information gathering, consumers end up not gathering complete information on all the products, and need to make decisions under imperfect information. I solve for the optimal search, switch, and purchase or exit behavior in such a setting, which is characterized by an optimal consideration set and a purchase threshold structure. It is shown that a product is only considered for search or purchase if it has a sufficiently high expected utility. Given multiple products in the consumer's consideration set, the consumer only stops searching for information and purchases a product if the difference between the expected utilities of the top two products is greater than some threshold. Comparative statics show that negative information correlation among products widens the purchase threshold, and so does an increase in the number of the choices. Under my rational consumer model, I show that choice overload can occur when consumers search or evaluate multiple alternatives before making a purchase decision. I also find that it is optimal for sellers of multiple products to facilitate information search for low-valuation consumers, while obfuscate information for those with high valuations. In the second essay, I conduct an empirical study of peer effects of iPhone adoptions on social networks. I use a unique data set from a provincial capital city in China, in a span of over four years starting from iPhone's first introduction to mainland China. I construct a social network using six month's call transactions between iPhone adopters and all other users on a carrier's network. Strength of social ties is measured by duration of calls. Based on the network structure, I test whether an individual's adoption decision is influenced by his friends' adoptions. A fixed-effect model shows that, on average, a friend's adoption increases one's adoption probability in next month by 0.89%, and the marginal effect decreases in the size of his current neighboring adopters. To further control for potential time-varying correlated unobservables, I instrument adoptions of one's friends by their birthdays, based on the fact that consumers are more likely to adopt iPhones on birthdays. The IV estimation shows a slightly smaller peer effect at 0.75%. I also investigate how network structures modulate the magnitude of peer influence. My results show that peer effect is stronger when the influencer has more friends or has a stronger relationship with the influence. In the third essay, I study the problem of coordination of operations and marketing decisions for new product introductions. In the industry with radical technology push or rapidly changing customer preference, it is firms' common wisdom to introduce high-end product first, and follow by low-end product line extensions. A key decision in this "down-market stretch" strategy is the introduction time. High inventory cost is pervasive in such industries, but its impact has long been ignored during the presale planning stage. This essay takes a first step towards filling this gap. I propose an integrated inventory (supply) and diffusion (demand) framework, and analyze how inventory cost influences the introduction timing of product line extensions, considering substitution effect among successive generations. I show that under low inventory cost or frequent replenishment ordering policy, the optimal introduction time indeed follows the well-known "Now" or "Never" rule. However, sequential introduction becomes optimal as the inventory holding gets more substantial or the product life cycle gets shorter. The optimal introduction timing can increase or decrease with the inventory cost depending on the marketplace setting, requiring a careful analysis.

Download or read book Two Essays on Consumer Choice written by Rishin Roy and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Honor of Cheng Hsiao written by Dek Terrell and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-15 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including contributions spanning a variety of theoretical and applied topics in econometrics, this volume of Advances in Econometrics is published in honour of Cheng Hsiao.

Download or read book Essays on Consumption Smoothing and Risk Sharing written by Yingchun Liu and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Digital and Social Media Marketing written by Nripendra P. Rana and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines issues and implications of digital and social media marketing for emerging markets. These markets necessitate substantial adaptations of developed theories and approaches employed in the Western world. The book investigates problems specific to emerging markets, while identifying new theoretical constructs and practical applications of digital marketing. It addresses topics such as electronic word of mouth (eWOM), demographic differences in digital marketing, mobile marketing, search engine advertising, among others. A radical increase in both temporal and geographical reach is empowering consumers to exert influence on brands, products, and services. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and digital media are having a significant impact on the way people communicate and fulfil their socio-economic, emotional and material needs. These technologies are also being harnessed by businesses for various purposes including distribution and selling of goods, retailing of consumer services, customer relationship management, and influencing consumer behaviour by employing digital marketing practices. This book considers this, as it examines the practice and research related to digital and social media marketing.

Download or read book Essays on Household Consumption written by Matias Felix Barenstein and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Dynamic Consumers Brand Choice written by Nahyeon Bak and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is a collection of essays on consumer's state dependent choice. In many consumers packaged goods markets, consumer's brand choice is highly persistent because of state dependence where past choice directly influence present choice. Chapter I investigates why consumer choices show state dependence by testing two competing theories: learning and switching costs. To test them, I used a Nielsen consumer panel data set including a long history of repeated purchases by 28,724 households from 2006-2015. Reduced form estimates suggest that the results align with learning, but not switching costs. I also find the only the first and second brand experiences affect present choice. In Chapter II, consistent with reduced-form analysis, I hypothesize that under learning behavior, if consumers try a new brand, consumers are likely to choose a smaller size than before because of uncertainty on product information, if not, consumers are likely to choose a bigger size than before because of lower price per unit with a bigger size. However, under switching cost behavior, consumers size choice will not be affected by brand switching decision. To test this causal relationship between brand switching decision and size choice, I adopt double machine learning method. Compared to previous reduced-form analysis, double machine learning model specifies a set of control variables without human judgement and it provides a causal parameter. Also, compared to naive or prediction based machine learning models, it overcomes the regularization bias by using Neyman orthogonality and over-fitting problems by using sample splitting method. As a result, I find that consumer's new trial on a brand leads to choose a smaller size choice than before where it supports learning behavior, not switching costs behavior. These reduced form studies of Chapter I and II motivate structural approaches to empirical modeling. Chapter III tests the two competing theories with a structural demand model that incorporated variety-seeking behavior. Previous studies failed to explain how states affect two decisions: not only persistent brand choice, but also brand switching that usually variety-seeker have shown. To incorporate these decisions, I develop a dynamic panel demand model with multiple discreteness choices for estimating preferences where some consumers switch brand frequently even most consumers show persistent brand choice. I first find that consumers learn fast, which disputes previous slowdown learning models such as Bayesian learning. Second, state dependence of consumer choice diminishes with time elapsed from each purchase. These findings are robust to controlling variety seeking behavior or not. Combining Chapter I, II, and III, I conclude that with the assumption on myopic consumers, because of learning behavior, consumers show persistent brand choice in the initial shopping period, but as they exposure to the same brands again and again, they become satiated the brand. In other words, consumers show diminishing marginal utility over quantity consumed. Therefore, consumers switch a brand.

Download or read book Essays on Saving Bequests Altruism and Life cycle Planning written by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-06-22 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays, coauthored with other distinguished economists, offers new perspectives on saving, intergenerational economic ties, retirement planning, and the distribution of wealth. The book links life-cycle microeconomic behavior to important macroeconomic outcomes, including the roughly 50 percent postwar decline in America's rate of saving and its increasing wealth inequality. The book traces these outcomes to the government's five-decade-long policy of transferring, in the form of annuities, ever larger sums from young savers to old spenders. The book presents new theoretical and empirical analyses of altruism that rule out the possibility that private intergenerational transfers have offset those by the government.While rational life-cycle behavior can explain broad economic outcomes, the book also shows that a significant minority of households fail to make coherent life-cycle saving and insurance decisions. These mistakes are compounded by reliance on conventional financial planning tools, which the book compares with Economic Security Planner (ESPlanner), a new life-cycle financial planning software program. The application of ESPlanner to U.S. data indicates that most Americans approaching retirement age are saving at much lower rates than they should be, given potential major cuts in Social Security benefits.

Download or read book Essays on the Theory and Practice of Index Numbers written by Kam Yu and published by VDM Verlag. This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic measurement has over the years become an important subject in academic and policy researches. Debates in the development of macroeconomic theory and public policy rely on accurate feedback of aggregate data. This book fills the gap between the theory and practice in index numbers. It reviews and explores several important topics which lead to improvement in measuring price and output indices. These include econometric problems in hedonic regression, treatment of seasonal goods in the CPI, output and productivity measurement of government services, efficiency analysis of the health care sector, and a novel approach in calculating the cost-of-living indices for products involving risk and uncertainty. The book serves as a valuable references for academic economists, policy analysts, and economic statisticians.

Download or read book Time Pressure How Influences written by Johnny Ch Lok and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consumer behavioral research topic is general businessmen whom have interest to investigate. They aims may expect to find whether how and why the consumers select to buy the product or research whether which factots can influence consumers' choices to change their consumption attitudes or desires to select to buy the product or consume the service.In this book, however, I aim to research whether time factor can influence the consumer individual consumption desire to be changed either to choose to buy this product or consume this service or choose to buy another product or consume another service to replace the consumer whose original preference choice. If time factor can influence any one consumer individual consumption choice to be changed easily.Wheher it will bring advantages or disadvantages to the consumer or seller or service provider. IS time factor a preference or main factor to influence consumers to change consumption desires more easily? Why and how time factor can influence consumer behavioral change suddenly? In what situations, consumers will be influenced to change purchase choice or service consumption choice more easily? How can the product seller or service provider apply time factor psychological method to predict consumer individual consumption desire how to be attracted or influenced them to choose to buy its product or consume its service from time variable or time changing factor influence in the indicated unique situation or time limiting pressure consumption environment.I research this topic aim to let any product sellers, service providers, consumers can understand that whether it is possible that time factor can influence consumer behaviors to be changed easily in order to let product sellers or service providers may attempt prediction when their consumer behaviours may be influenced to change by time variable influence or their consumer behaviors may be influenced to change in what consumption environments or situations. Also, I shall give opinions to attempt to explain whether what advantages can attract to persuade the consumer whom changes consumption desire from time variable factor influence suddenly.All of above questions, I shall indicate sample cases to let readers to understanf clearly. The topic is suitable to students to research aim, or businessmen whom aim to attempt to make predictions when their consumer behaviors will be influenced to change by time variable factor.

Download or read book THREE ESSAYS ON THE IMPACT OF FIRMS DIGITAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES ON ONLINE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR written by Siddharth Bhattacharya and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In my dissertation, I study the strategic interplay among firm's online communication, firm's digital strategies and its impact on consumer decision making. I identify important strategies that firms can adopt while targeting consumers on search engine platforms, such as Google and Bing. For technology-firms interested in providing information cues to consumers, online advertising serves as an important tool to nudge consumers decision making. Through the use of diverse methodologies, including empirical, analytical, and behavioral, I attempt to answer important questions in this research space. Moreover, I investigate how firm strategies are affected by factors such as heterogeneity of consumer preferences, product quality, and competition. The research spans across disciplines, and makes contributions to Information Systems, Operations Management and Marketing. In essay 1 I investigate the novel context of "competitive poaching", a phenomenon where firms can generate traffic from search advertising by bidding on competitors' keywords. In this research I examine the factors that influence the effectiveness of competitive poaching, specifically the role of different ad copies and the type of competitor (poached brand) from which a brand is "poaching. "I also examine how the presence of sponsored ads from the poached brand and its physical location affect competitive poaching. In Essay 2, I investigate a similar context but here instead of only competing against each other, firms are simultaneously competing and cooperating with each other while advertising on the search engine. Thus, we have a novel context where a firm and its third-party referral partner (often referred to as "Infomediaries") compete and cooperate while advertising simultaneously on the search engine. In this context, how equilibrium payment and advertising strategies are affected by factors such as traffic quality, advertising effectiveness, leakage, and the nature of contract between the two firms, remains an open question. Using a game-theoretic model, I show that the novel balance between the competitive and the collaborative nature of the interaction, which itself gets affected by the choice of contract and changes in the environmental factors, alters equilibrium strategies commonly expected in existing literature. In my third essay, I study the novel yet increasingly common phenomenon of "multiscreen viewing", a phenomenon where consumers are increasingly using additional devices (like smartphones or tablets) while watching TV. This provides an additional advertising channel for marketers, specifically the second screen. However, this is not without its complexities; as marketers must optimally time advertisements on the second screen conditional on multiple factors including consumers' engagement level on the primary screen, consumers' engagement level on the second screen, and the psychological involvement with the content on the primary screen. Administering multiple behavioral experiments, I investigate how factors such as users' engagement with the primary screen (e.g., TV), users' engagement with a second screen (e.g., Mobile), timing of the advertisement, and message congruence, affect second screen usage and ad recall. Theoretical and managerial contributions of each of these essays are discussed.

Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Honor of Edwin Mansfield written by Albert N. Link and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edwin Mansfield was a research pioneer into the economics of R and D and technological change. As appreciation and remembrance for his scholarly contributions, eminent scholars have contributed original papers for this edited volume. The authors have followed the "Mansfieldian” approach of emphasizing economic insight and intuition over mathematical rigor and as a result are very accessable. Essays in Honor of Edwin Mansfield has the potential to serve as a reader in all advanced undergraduate and graduate classes/seminars in the economics of R and D and technological change. This edited volume will be the definitive work in the field.

Download or read book Scalable Models of Consumer Demand with Large Choice Sets written by Robert Nathanael Donnelly and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays related to the analysis of heterogeneity in consumer preferences based on individual level data on historical choices. In particular, they are connected by their application of modern Bayesian approaches to model consumers who differ both in their preferences for observed characteristics as well as their preferences for characteristics that are unobserved by the econometrician, but can instead be inferred from the correlations in choice behavior across different subsets of the population of consumers. The three chapters of this dissertation are also connected by their focus on scalability (both in computation and statistical efficiency) to large choice sets. Large choice sets are all around us, and the rise of E-commerce is leading to even larger sets of products that consumers can choose between. The average grocery store has tens of thousands of unique SKUs. The South Bay region around Stanford University has thousands of restaurants to choose between when you decide to go out for lunch. Large web retailers like Amazon sell hundreds of millions of distinct items. Individual level data on choices in situations like these present both opportunities and challenges. While these data sources are often large and rich in information, it is almost always the case that the number of choice occasions that we observe for any single individual is very small relative to the number of possible items they could have chosen between. Some types of products are easily described as a bundle of characteristics that consumers have preferences over, for example cars (horsepower, number of doors, leather seats) or digital cameras (resolution, zoom, flash), however for many other product categories it is more difficult to find a ''feature representation'' of products that accurately captures the heterogeneity in preferences across consumers. What are the characteristics that differ between Coke and Pepsi that lead to such strong disagreements over which is best. My work builds on recently developed approaches from machine learning for estimating models with large numbers of latent variables. This allows us to infer latent ''characteristics'' of products that are not directly observed by the econometrician, but can be inferred based on similarities in choice patterns across a large set of consumers. This allows us to model consumer preferences with heterogeneity in preferences for both observed and unobserved product characteristics. The first chapter of this dissertation is a paper written together with Susan Athey, David Blei, Francisco Ruiz, and Tobias Schmidt which analyzes consumer choices over lunchtime restaurants using data from a sample of several thousand anonymous mobile phone users in the San Francisco Bay Area. The data is used to identify users' approximate typical morning location, as well as their choices of lunchtime restaurants. We build a model where restaurants have latent characteristics (whose distribution may depend on restaurant observables, such as star ratings, food category, and price range), each user has preferences for these latent characteristics, and these preferences are heterogeneous across users. Similarly, each restaurant has latent characteristics that describe users' willingness to travel to the restaurant, and each user has individual-specific preferences for those latent characteristics. Thus, both users' willingness to travel and their base utility for each restaurant vary across user-restaurant pairs. We use a Bayesian approach to estimation. To make the estimation computationally feasible, we rely on variational inference to approximate the posterior distribution, as well as stochastic gradient descent as a computational approach. Our model performs better than more standard competing models such as multinomial logit and nested logit models, in part due to the personalization of the estimates. We analyze how consumers re-allocate their demand after a restaurant opens or closes and compare our predictions to the actual realized outcomes. Finally, we show how the model can be used to analyze counterfactual questions such as what type of restaurant would attract the most consumers in a given location. The second chapter is a paper written together with Susan Athey, David Blei, and Francisco Ruiz applies a similar approach in the context of supermarket scanner data. This paper demonstrates a method for estimating consumer preferences among discrete choices, where the consumer makes choices from many different categories. The consumer's utility is additive in the different categories, and her preferences about product attributes as well as her price sensitivity vary across products. Her preferences are correlated across products. We build on techniques from the machine learning literature on probabilistic models of matrix factorization, extending the methods to account for time-varying product attributes, a more realistic functional form for price sensitivity, and products going out of stock. We incorporate the information about the product hierarchy, so that consumers are assumed to select at most one alternative within a category. We evaluate the performance of the model using held-out data from weeks with price changes. We show that our model improves over traditional modeling approaches that consider each category in isolation, when we evaluate the ability of the model to predict responsiveness to price changes (using held-out data from a large number of price changes that occurred in our sample). We show that one source of the improvement is the ability of the model to accurately estimate heterogeneity in preferences (by pooling information across categories); another source of improvement is its ability to estimate the preferences of consumers who have rarely or never made a purchase in a given category in the training data. We consider counterfactuals such as personally targeted price discounts, showing that using a richer model such as the one we propose substantially increases the benefits of personalization in discounts. The third chapter of this dissertation proposes a novel estimator for learning heterogeneous consumer preferences based on both browsing and purchase data from online retailers with large product assortments. This work was done in collaboration with Ilya Morozov. Despite increasing availability data on the product pages consumers browse prior to making a purchase, the existing marketing literature provides little guidance on how retailers can use it to make better marketing decisions. In this paper, we propose an empirical framework that allows to efficiently extract information from consumers' search histories and use it to design personalized product recommendations. Our framework is based on the standard consideration set model from the marketing literature. To extract information from the unstructured search data, we augment the model with rich consumer heterogeneity and include several unobserved product characteristics. We then propose a way to estimate this model's parameters using a latent factorization approach from the computer science literature. The proposed framework can be seen as combining a structural approach to modeling consumer consideration from marketing with nonparametric estimation methods commonly used in the computer science. We are in discussion with a large online retailer to gain access to data and to run an AB test to experimentally validate the effects of improved rankings and recommendations of products.