As with any other object, people represent companies along a number of dimensions. But what are the key psychological dimensions that best describe companies, organizations, or brands? We apply research methods initially developed for studying attitudes, including attitudes to other people, to look at how the public represents corporate ‘personality’. The major dimensions that psychologically differentiate companies resemble human factors of personality and can be labelled Honesty, Prestige, Innovation, and Power. These dimensions are confirmed after a time gap of 1 year, also capturing specific changes in the rating of individual companies. The proposed methodology not only has substantial commercial value in helping companies understand and track their public perception, but scales of this type can potentially guide and manage the decision-making of individuals or groups inside and outside rated organizations, thus influencing their organizational culture. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In customer segmentation, a common strategy is to use individual differences as a predictor of future behavior. Recent advances in data management in large financial institutions give an unprecedented and potentially powerful source of data for identifying such differences. We show that spending data can substantially help target the direct marketing of financial products, and constitutes new information, not captured by demographics. In particular, a systematic combination of this independent source and more traditional measures can enhance the predictive power of marketing research and improve the relationship with customers as illustrated in a direct mailing selection method which substantially raises response rates.

In many theories of decision under risk (e.g., expected utility theory, rank-dependent utility theory, and prospect theory), the utility of a prospect is independent of other options in the choice set. The experiments presented here show a large effect of the available options, suggesting instead that prospects are valued relative to one another. The judged certainty equivalent for a prospect is strongly influenced by the options available. Similarly, the selection of a preferred prospect is strongly influenced by the prospects available. Alternative theories of decision under risk (e.g., the stochastic difference model, multialternative decision field theory, and range frequency theory), where prospects are valued relative to one another, can provide an account of these context effects.

Current models of decision making under risk assume access to the absolute magnitudes of gamble attributes. The two experiments presented here provide evidence that decisions under risk are based, in addition, on the context of the decision. In Experiment 1 the set of options offered as certainty equivalents was shown to determine the value of simple gambles of the form “p chance of £x”. Experiment 2 employed a novel procedure where the payment structure was such that it was optimal for participants to provide truthful certainty equivalents. Again, the context provided by the set of certainty equivalents influenced the choice of certainty equivalent.