UC Doctoral Candidate Wins Third Place in Dissertation Competition

John Dinsmore, a doctoral candidate in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, is one of three finalists in the 2012 Behavioral Pricing Dissertation Competition, receiving honorable mention from the Fordham University Pricing Center in New York.

His dissertation, “Mental Accounting, General Evaluability Theory and The Framing Losses Posed by Partitioned Monetary and Nonmonetary Prices” will be presented at the Behavioral Pricing conference at Wayne State University in Detroit on August 15-17, 2012.

Dinsmore is working on his PhD in marketing and will graduate in May 2013. His paper examines multiple price structures for consumer goods and services, both monetary (the actual fee charged) and nonmonetary (e.g. sharing of personal information or requiring a consumer to view an advertisement), leaving consumers to decipher a level of risk when purchasing that product.

He found that nonmonetary prices evoke different consideration sets and remain segregated in the mind of the consumer, causing a product to be perceived as more risky.  Similarly, combining a monetary and nonmonetary price, as two categorically different prices, increases the level of perceived risk for a product.

Dinsmore says he is privileged that his study was chosen as a top three.

“It’s kind of prestigious as doctoral candidates from around the world submit for it,” Dinsmore says.