Véronique Flambard participated in the writing of 2 articles that have just been accepted.
The first “Personalized information and willingness to pay for non-financial risk prevention : an experiment.”
Abstract: When receiving personalized rather than population-based information, agents improve their knowledge about their probability of experiencing adverse events (e.g. health shocks). Being revealed as high or low risk, they may revise their willingness to pay (WTP) for prevention programs. If the WTP changes of the high- and low-risk individuals go in opposite directions, the overall impact on the WTP for prevention depends on whether the relationship between WTP and the initial probability of damage is convex or concave. We address this question in a laboratory experiment. Participants received an endowment and were exposed to a non-financial damage – consisting in electrical shocks – with a certain probability. We elicit subjects’ WTP for self-protection and self-insurance, i.e. actions reducing respectively the probability and the number of shocks, using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism. Our results suggest that WTP for self-protection is insensitive to the baseline probability to undergo pain, but reveal that WTP for self-insurance increases at a decreasing rate with this probability. This implies that the diffusion of personalized information should reduce the demand for self-insurance programs.
The second one “Do consumer’s Sensory Cues’ Preferences in Retail differ between Neighbouring Countries?”
Abstract: Sensory marketing enables retailers to elevate consumers’ shopping experience. Key to their success, is whether they should adapt their retail strategy to the country where they operate or not. This research contributes to better inform international retail by investigating cross-country differences in consumers’ sensorial preferences. It extends the actual conceptual framework of experiential marketing by adding an international dimension to it. It also offers the first empirical evidence that preferences for sensory cues do differ in two neighbouring European countries, when controlling for socio-economic variables, based on econometric analyses. The analysis also uncovers why shoppers like or dislike a specific sensory cue. The results suggest that French retailers cannot duplicate in England, sensory tactics used in France and viceversa. This is the first study that contrasts consumer’s preference for in-store sensory cues across countries to better inform the merchandising strategies ofinternational retailers.