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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among choice of industry diversification, capabilities and business group performance, as well as to point out the potential concern about endogenous role of industry diversification.

Using data from the top 100 business groups in Taiwan from TEJ database. This study uses Heckman’s two-step estimation procedure and contingency model to achieve unbiased results and examine our hypotheses.

The results of this study find that if business groups’ marketing or operational capabilities are strong they should adopt a high level of diversification strategy and if business groups’ R&D capability is strong they should adopt a low level one. The results of this study also show that the endogenous problem of industry diversification exists, and needs to be considered. Moreover, our finding confirms the importance of capability–strategy fit, which, in turn, can achieve better performance.

On average, high industry diversification groups perform better than low industry diversification groups after controlling for endogeneity issues. Business groups can achieve better performance if their strategy choices match the capabilities they encounter. Managers should pay attention to strategy-capability fit issues. Specifically, they should review their organizational capabilities as well as check their strategies within firms.

This study is one of the first that attempts to explore the endogenous role of diversification strategy choices, and empirical examine strategy-capability fit on business group performance.

The general aim is to represent managerial thinking on strategy choice in a context other than steady‐state growth. The model has the following features: (i) Strategy choice is defined as the adoption of rules governing investment choice; (ii) given its strategy, management sees growth in terms of a probability distribution of growth‐paths of expected dividend; (iii) managment's valuation model closely matches its probabilistic view of growth prospects; (iv) the managerial utility function has an extended horizon. Discussion of strategy choice yields no general presumption that managment senses a conflict between its own preference and its commonsense interpretation of investors' preferences.

This study aims to examine the nature and impact of information overload and related coping strategies in the context of apparel shopping. It also examines perceptions of overload and coping strategies as antecedents to consumer confidence, shopping orientation and leader/follower status.

Focus groups and previous literature are used to develop components for a survey of US consumer perceptions. The 205 valid responses were factor analyzed to identify components of information overload and coping strategies, and cluster analysis was used to identify groupings of consumers around those constructs.

Consumer segments that result from cluster analysis show meaningful descriptions regarding information flow, over‐choice and coping strategies. Segments also differ on confidence level, shopping orientation and fashion leadership in ways that appear logically related to their information and coping strategy perspectives.

The study does not explore the underlying psychological and intellectual processes that influence attitude toward information flow and coping strategies.

By categorizing consumer attitudes toward and strategies for coping with too much information, the study offers the industry insight into how modern marketing strategies may backfire rather than create knowledgeable consumers ready to adopt the latest products made available to them.

This study is the first to view information overload and coping strategies as antecedents to confidence, shopper orientation and fashion leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into how consumers cope with confusion caused by overload in information and/or choice. The paper investigates whether consumers who face different degrees of confusion use different coping strategies depending upon their decision‐making styles.

The Dutch mobile phone market is a typical example of a turbulent market, overloaded with information and/or choice, which creates consumer confusion. A survey was conducted among 203 mobile phone users, using valid and reliable multi‐item scales to measure consumer confusion, decision‐making styles and coping strategies. Cluster analysis and Mancova were used to provide insight into the results.

The paper finds that consumers of mobile phones can be characterized by combinations of decision‐making styles and find three clusters based on decision‐making styles: “price conscious and cautious” consumers, “brand‐loyal and quality‐driven” consumers, and “functionalist” consumers. Results show significant main effects of the degree of confusion and the decision‐making styles on the use of coping strategies as well as a significant interaction effect of these two. Higher levels of consumer confusion lead to an increased use of seven coping strategies: downsizing the consideration set; keeping status quo; reduced information search; search deferral; buying what others have bought; disengagement from decision; and decision delegation. “Price conscious and cautious” consumers engage less in downsizing the consideration set than the two other clusters, and are less inclined to keep the status quo as compared to “functionalist” consumers.

Because of the intangible and heterogeneous nature of services, knowledge about coping with confusion due to an overload in information and choice is especially important for service providers in their efforts to build and sustain strong relationships with consumers. Practical implications in terms of different approaches on how to cope with confused consumers are provided.

To evaluate the comparative effectiveness of perceptions‐based market segmentation strategies: to what extent do consumers' choice rules and the distinctness and variability of consumer preferences determine the success or failure of PBMS strategies?

The computer simulation is run on an artificial consumer market. Its firm and consumer agents enjoy a certain extent of autonomy and a limited capability of learning. Strategies for incorporating the choice information into the firms' segmentation schemes, consumers' brand choice rules, initial preference patterns and their variability over time are factors in the experimental design.

The market factors “brand choice rule” and “distinctness” and “adaptivity” of preferences significantly influence the profit performance of the segmentation and positioning strategies. The distinctness of the initial pattern of consumer preferences turns out to be least influential while the choice rule is most important.

Computer simulation cannot replace analyses of real‐world data. When, however, advanced explanatory models are made to fit to empirical data the results sometimes are disappointing (and then do not get published). Computer simulation on artificial markets assists in exploring the reasons for success or failure.

Boundedly rational consumers; product classes which are technologically homogeneous and subject to communications‐driven differentiation; consumer preferences that are directly inaccessible and must be inferred from actual brand choice; consumers' perceptions and preferences evolving over time are realistic settings.

Controlling for conditions such as the consumers' choice rules and the distribution and variability of preferences in real markets demands a prohibitive research effort. No empirical study so far has tried to systematically relate the profit performance of marketing strategies to choice rules and preference distinctness and variability.

This study aims at exploring the choices of livelihood strategies amongst the rural youth and how these choices relate to food security and income poverty.

The study used data from the 2016/17 wave of Integrated Household Living Condition Survey, with a sample size of 1,050 rural youths. Statistical and econometrics methods including descriptive statistics and the Multinomial Endogenous Treatment Effect (METE) model were used to analyse the data.

Livelihood choices were grouped into five categories, namely agriculture, non-farm wage employment, agriculture plus non-farm wage, agriculture plus self-employment and agriculture plus non-farm wage plus self-employment. The estimates from METE indicate that the youths' choice of non-farm wage, agriculture plus non-farm wage and agriculture plus self-employment contributes substantially to household food security improvement and poverty reduction. These findings show that agriculture is necessary but not a sufficient livelihood strategy to sustain the rural youth's contribution to youth's household welfare. The rural youth will pursue agriculture as a reliable source of livelihood not only for food self-sufficiency, but also for ensuring adequate return to labour.

This paper extends single choice analysis to multiple choices impact analysis, which has the advantage of accounting for selection bias due to both observed and unobserved heterogeneity. This paper assesses the differential impact of the choice of single as well as multiple livelihood strategies.

This paper investigates how respondents to conjoint experiments process information and choose among product profiles, and how this varies with their knowledge about the product. Models for estimating conjoint attribute weights are almost exclusively based on principles of compensatory decision making. The paper aims to explore to what extent and in what way these basic principles of conjoint modelling are violated.

Data were obtained from a verbal protocol study where 18 undergraduate students each performed a total of 28 stated choice tasks while “thinking aloud”.

Results show that cognitive operations consistent with compensatory decision rules constitute a majority of the total number of operations performed across tasks and respondents. However, few respondents exhibited a consistent use of compensatory‐type processes throughout their choice sets. Results suggest that individual preferences interact with characteristics of the choice sets to instigate changes in information processing. It also appears that complete strategies are seldom used. Finally, respondents' knowledge about the product influences the cognitive operations that respondents use in solving conjoint tasks.

Results are based on responses from 18 undergraduate students, which makes generalizations hard.

One implication of this work is that one should apply a more flexible model framework to allow detecting the existence of non‐compensatory strategies.

This paper is one of few which aim to implement findings in behavvioral decision research within the context of conjoint analysis.

Dual‐concern models suggest that “concern about self” and “concern about other” motivate individuals to choose conflict‐handling strategies. We test those assumptions with a study of the cognitions associated with the choice of conflict strategies. Consistent with dual‐concern model conceptualizations, regression analyses that account for up to 41% of variance indicate that concern about self and concern about other are significantly associated with dominating and obliging strategies. However, predicted interactions between concern about self and concern about other and avoiding, compromising, and integrating strategies are not consistent with conceptualizations in dual‐concern models. Results from this study suggest the need for a conflict‐handling model with dimensions that account for more of the variance in the choices to avoid, compromise, and integrate.

Farmland transfer choice is strongly associated with the livelihood strategies of rural households. The 2014 Three Property Rights Separation (TPRS) reform has legalized farmland transfer practices in rural China, hence stimulating the farmland transfer market at the national scale. This paper aims to determine the extent to which rural family livelihood strategies are influenced by their participation decision in farmland transfer practices. Further, the authors examined the effectiveness of the TPRS reform on the impact of farmland transfer participation on rural household livelihood strategy choices.

Based on the sustainable livelihood approach (SLA) using data from a national rural household survey, the authors employ the logit model and the propensity score matching (PSM) method to estimate the impact of household farmland transfer participation. Its interaction effects with household livelihood capital on their livelihood strategy choices and diversification level are also investigated. The difference-in-difference (DID) model is employed to assess the effectiveness of the TPRS reform.

The results indicate that the participation in transferred-out farmland could improve rural households' non-agricultural livelihood strategies. While the participation in transferred-in farmland could improve the probability of rural families' engaging in pure-agricultural (PA) or agricultural-dependent (AD) livelihood strategies, the TPRS reform can attract specialized farmers to increase their farm size through the market solutions and encourage small farmers to leave their farmland to engage in more off-farm work.

This study contributes to the literature on farmers' livelihood by exploring the role of farmland transfer decision and the effectiveness of 2014 TPRS reform through the SLA approach.

This paper uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodology to analyse differences between Finnish and American web searchers (n=27 per country) in their choice of initial search strategies (direct address, subject directory and search engines) and their reasoning underlying these choices, with data gathered via a questionnaire. The paper looks at these differences for four types of questions with two variables: closed/open and predictable/unpredictable source of answer (n=16 questions per searcher; total n=864 questions). The paper found significant differences between the two groups’ initial search strategies and for three of the four types of questions. The reasoning varied across countries and questions as well, with Finns mentioning fewer reasons although both groups mentioned in aggregate a total of 1,284 reasons in twenty‐four reason categories. The reasoning indicated that both country groups considered not only question‐related reasons but also source‐ and search‐strategy related reasons in making their decision. The research raises questions about considering cultural differences in designing web search access mechanisms.