A Methodology for Studying How Individuals Choose Locations in Public Consumption Environments

Consumers often face public consumption environments (e.g., concerts, movie theaters, airplanes) in which they must tradeoff their locational preferences with their desire to maintain sufficient personal space. After we define attributes for locational choices and the need for personal spaces, we introduce a Bayesian methodology that allows for the identification of the heterogeneous drivers of locational choices faced by consumers in such environments. We demonstrate the usefulness of the methodology with analyses of two scenarios illustrating how consumers choose seats at movie theaters and concert halls.