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July 25, 2006
Netflix procrastination rediscovered yet again
DECISION SCIENCE NEWS MEME HITS WSJ, SLASHDOT, AND DIGG
DSN reported just two weeks ago that the habit of Netflix procrastination--recently put forth by two DSN writers in Harvard Business Review--found its way into a Newsweek blog.
This week, we report that the same idea has now made the Wall Street Journal Online and picked up by news ranking sites Slashdot and Digg.
DSN is happy to be making the news that is making the news, but next time a little credit, please.
Posted by dggoldst at 06:20 AM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2006
The launch of an entirely online decison making journal
JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING
History is made as an entirely online (and for the time being free) journal titled Judgment and Decision Making launches its Volume 1, Number 1. Things seem to be off to a good start, with a solid editorial board and a first issue featuring some heavy hitters.
Decision Science News, which ran an exclusive interview with Editor Jon Baron before the project was launched, wishes the journal the best.
Posted by dggoldst at 04:35 AM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2006
Decision Science News hits a meme
CATCHY NAME GIVEN TO NETFLIX GUILT
In July 2006, DSN writers Dan Goldstein and Dominique Goldstein described in a Harvard Business Review article titled "Profiting from the Long Tail" a behavioral phenomenon in which Netflix customers let highbrow movies sit around unwatched while lowbrow films get watched and returned right away. They use as examples "The Seventh Seal" vs. "Meet the Fockers" and draw an analogy to neglected gym memberships.
Skip ahead 6 weeks and Newsweek blogger Brad Stone has called this "Netflix Guilt" in a recent blog post. Chez Stone it's "City of God" vs. "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and the gym membership analogy ... remains a gym membership analogy.
Jet back to 1999, before Netflix even existed, and the highbrow / lowbrow film choice problem is examined in an article by decision researchers Read, Loewenstein, and Kalyanaraman.
ADDENDUM: This just discovered a few hours after the original post. In 1994 academic blogger Henry Farrell called this "The Netflix Fallacy". Discoveries, discoveries in the long tail of cites.
REFERENCES:
Goldstein, D. G., & Goldstein, D. C. (2006). Profiting from the long tail. Harvard Business Review, 84(6), 24-28.
Read, D., Loewenstein, G., & Kalyanaraman, S. (1999). Mixing virtue and vice: Combining the immediacy effect and the diversification heuristic. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12, 257-273.
Thanks to Prof. Suzanne Shu for the find.
Posted by dggoldst at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2006
CDS gets a new look
CENTER FOR THE DECISION SCIENCE REBRANDS
Former Decision Science News home The Center for The Decision Sciences at Columbia University launches its new clean look and feel and a tidier URL: decisionsciences.columbia.edu.
Stop by and have a click. While there, listen to these nice audio interviews with Elke Weber and other decision researchers on the BBC.
Posted by dggoldst at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)