Katherine Milkman - Faculty Research in Knowledge@Wharton

Hold the Vegetables: How 'Now vs. Later' Affects Customer Choice

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:48:17 EST

Do consumers' choices change based on when their purchases will be delivered? According to Wharton professor Katherine Milkman, the more immediate the gratification, the more freely customers tend to spend. In the latest in a series of research papers on customer choice, Milkman found that shoppers on an online grocery site were more likely to order junk food or other "want" items when those products would be delivered at an earlier date. The later the delivery date, the more likely the customers were to order "should" items such as fresh produce. Milkman says the findings could have implications for the structure and marketing methods of online retail sites.

A Seasonal Sales Shift: For Bargain Hunters, Retailers Make Every Day Feel like Christmas

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:14:34 EST

Target, Toys R Us, Sears and Kmart are just a few of the big retailers that have launched mega-sales in recent weeks to tempt increasingly cost-conscious shoppers to their stores. This phenomenon -- known as the seasonal sales shift, or "Christmas creep" -- is not new. But in today's uncertain economic climate, it has bigger implications than ever, both for the retail sector's growth strategies and for consumer spending habits, say Wharton and other business experts.

Efficient Markets or Herd Mentality? The Future of Economic Forecasting

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:18:47 EST

Once on the academic fringes, behavioral economics has been gaining considerable ground over the past year. While not all economists, government policy makers and corporate financiers agree wholeheartedly with behavioral economists' assertion that markets are inefficient and irrational, it's difficult in the wake of the global financial meltdown to be too dismissive of it, according to some Wharton faculty members. It's likely, they say, that future regulations will be shaped in part by both behavioral economics and the efficient market theory, which has dominated government policymaking since the early 1980s.