Heterogeneous consumer preferences for product quality and uncertainty

Wolfgang Maennig and Steffen Mueller

No 70, Working Papers from Chair for Economic Policy, University of Hamburg

Abstract: We provide evidence for heterogeneous consumer preferences for product quality and game outcome uncertainty (GOU) in Major League Baseball. Using attendance data from 2013 to 2019, we explore func-tional data clustering techniques to detect common patterns in predictive margins of team-specific win-ning probability. As a central result, we identify five groups of teams with similar GOU effects. However, only a few teams’ fans show GOU preferences that resemble the typical hump-shape that is postulated by the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis; the largest cluster is comprised of teams with fans whose at-tendance behavior is relatively insensitive to differences in GOU.

Keywords: Consumer demand; Heterogeneous preferences; Product Quality; Uncertainty of outcome hypothesis; Clustering; Functional data analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 L15 L2 L83 Z2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2021-12-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ind and nep-spo
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Hamburg Contemporary Economic Discussions, Issue 70, 2021

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hce:wpaper:070

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