title: Perfect Information vs Random Investigation: Safety Guidelines for a Consumer in the Jungle of Product Differentiation.
abstract: We present a graph-theoretic model of consumer choice, where final decisions are shown to be influenced by information and knowledge, in the form of individual awareness, discriminating ability, and perception of market structure. Building upon the distance-based Hotelling's differentiation idea, we describe the behavioral experience of several prototypes of consumers, who walk a hypothetical cognitive path in an attempt to maximize their satisfaction. Our simulations show that even consumers endowed with a small amount of information and knowledge may reach a very high level of utility. On the other hand, complete ignorance negatively affects the whole consumption process. In addition, rather unexpectedly, a random walk on the graph reveals to be a winning strategy, below a minimal threshold of information and knowledge.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Business, University of Catania, Corso Italia 55, 95129 Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessio Emanuele
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Biondo
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Business, University of Catania, Corso Italia 55, 95129 Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: Alfio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Giarlotta
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Catania, Via S. Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy.|INFN Section of Catania, Via S. Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pluchino
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Catania, Via S. Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy.|INFN Section of Catania, Via S. Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rapisarda
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D003257:Consumer Product Safety; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical