IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cesptp/hal-05750560.html

Learning by consuming in the lab

Author

Listed:
  • Louis Lévy-Garboua

  • Claire Owen
  • Laetitia Placido
  • Benoît Rapoport

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, INED - Institut national d'études démographiques)

Abstract

We build an experiment to uncover the bandit-like nature of consumer behavior usually masked by the product and time aggregation of consumption data. Subjects make repeated choices between musical styles (either all familiar or unfamiliar), and post-choice satisfaction is observed. We estimate Bayesian bandit models of learning taste by consuming with satiation. Our best model features decreasing random exploration, with openness being associated with higher exploration. Early exploration is more intensive in the unfamiliar treatment and persists throughout the experiment in both treatments. Overall, subjects make choices that deviate from their best prediction 61.5% of the time in the unfamiliar treatment versus 44.7% in the familiar treatment. Our model offers a rational interpretation of random utility in discrete consumer choices which does not rest on perception and/or decision errors.

Suggested Citation

  • Louis Lévy-Garboua & Claire Owen & Laetitia Placido & Benoît Rapoport, 2026. "Learning by consuming in the lab," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-05750560, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-05750560
    DOI: 10.1017/eec.2026.10050
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-05750560. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.