Three Essays Identifying Consumer Behavior By Groups

This dissertation examines consumer behavior in different markets. Six different types of Utah snow skiers, namely, half day, local, multiday, college and k-12 students, and season ticket holders, are analyzed in the first paper to determine their demand response to changes in prices, income, weather, transportation costs, and particular days. A quadratic term for temperature, and interaction terms between temperature, snowfall, and snow density are included to allow for nonlinear impacts of these factors. The point price elasticity of demand and the point cross price elasticity of demand are computed. Skiers purchasing daily tickets are more price sensitive than season ticket holders except for college student season ticket holders. The second essay analyzes season ticket consumption behavior for different groups of skiers. This study uses three different approaches to model the decision process for the season ticket holder, for four different groups of skiers. The first approach shows how different prices affect the number of season tickets sold. The second compares the pay-per-use price of the season ticket to the daily price. The effects of price and different seasons on the average number of visits are analyzed in the third approach. For each of the groups of skiers, on average season ticket holders use the season ticket enough to be cheaper than the daily price. The third essay uses two models to identify the effect students' background characteristics have on first year cumulative gpa, and whether students with the same high school gpa from different high schools have the same level of success in college. The first model estimates the effect of different background characteristics on first year cumulative gpa and is used to identify high schools having a large number of outliers. The second model includes a dummy variable for each high school having a significant number of students attending wsu, as an intercept and slope shifter with high school gpa. The interaction term is the interaction between hsgpa and the high school dummy variable. Results show predicted first year success at college is not consistent for students with the same gpa from different high schools. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest llc. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.].