Confusopoly
Confusopoly (aka Dilbert's confusopoly) is confusing marketing designed to prevent the buyer from making informed decisions. The term was invented by Scott Adams in his comic strip ''Dilbert''. Adams defined a confusopoly as "a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price". For example, similar items like mobile phones are advertised at various price plans according to different combinations of available minutes, text messaging capabilities and other services, thus making these offers practically incomparable when it could be easy to price similar units of usage to allow informed comparisons. The term confusopoly also applies because confusion within the targeted consumer group is purposefully maintained, so choices are based on emotional factors. The term has been adopted by economists. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, championing meaningful regulation for the financial industry, used the t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dark Patterns
A dark pattern (also known as a "deceptive design pattern") is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills. User experience designer Harry Brignull coined the neologism on 28 July 2010 with the registration of darkpatterns.org, a "pattern library with the specific goal of naming and shaming deceptive user interfaces". In 2023, he released the book ''Deceptive Patterns''. In 2021, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Consumer Reports created a tip line to collect information about dark patterns from the public. Patterns Privacy Zuckering "Privacy Zuckering" – named after Facebook co-founder and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg – is a practice that tricks users into sharing more information than they intended to. Users may give up this information unknowingly or through practices that obscure or delay the option to opt out of sharing their priv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Market For Lemons
"The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" is a widely cited seminal paper in the field of economics which explores the concept of asymmetric information in markets. The paper was written in 1970 by George Akerlof and published in the ''Quarterly Journal of Economics''. The paper's theory has since been applied to many types of markets. Akerlof examines how the quality of goods traded in a market can degrade in the presence of information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, which ultimately leaves goods that are found to be defective after purchase in the market, noted by the term 'lemon' in the title of the paper. In American slang, a lemon is a car that is found to be defective after it has been bought. Akerlof's theory of the "Market for Lemons" paper applies to markets with information asymmetry, focusing on the used car market. Information asymmetry within the market relates to the seller having more information about the quality of the car as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scott Adams
Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the ''Dilbert'' comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire. Adams worked in various corporate roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. While working at Pacific Bell in 1989, Adams created ''Dilbert.'' By the mid-1990s, the strip had gained national prominence in the United States and began to reach a worldwide audience. ''Dilbert'' remained popular throughout the following decades, spawning several books written by Adams. Adams writes in a Satire, satirical way about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in modern corporations. In addition, Adams has written books in various other areas, including the Pandeism, pandeistic spiritual novella ''God's Debris'' and books on political and management topics, including ''Loserthink''. In February 2023, ''Dilbert'' was dropped by numerous newspapers a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Cordray
Richard Adams Cordray (born May 3, 1959) is an American lawyer and politician who served from 2021 to 2024 as COO of Federal Student Aid in the United States Department of Education. From 2012 to 2017, he served as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Before that, Cordray variously served as Ohio's Ohio Attorney General, attorney general, Solicitor General of Ohio, solicitor general, and Ohio State Treasurer, treasurer. He was the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio in 2018 Ohio gubernatorial election, 2018. In April 2024, the Biden administration announced Cordray's departure after a chaotic rollout of changes to the FAFSA student aid application form. Cordray was raised near Columbus, Ohio and attended Michigan State University. He was subsequently a Marshall Scholar at Brasenose College, Oxford and then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the ''University of Chicago ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Imperfect Competition
In economics, imperfect competition refers to a situation where the characteristics of an economic market do not fulfil all the necessary conditions of a perfectly competitive market. Imperfect competition causes market inefficiencies, resulting in market failure. Imperfect competition usually describes behaviour of suppliers in a market, such that the level of competition between sellers is below the level of competition in perfectly competitive market conditions. The competitive structure of a market can significantly impact the financial performance and conduct of the firms competing within it. There is a causal relationship between competitive structure, behaviour and performance paradigm. Market structure can be determined by measuring the degree of suppliers' market concentration, which in turn reveals the nature of market competition. The degree of market power refers to firms' ability to affect the price of a good and thus, raise the market price of the good or service abov ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mate Choice
Mate choice is one of the primary mechanisms under which evolution can occur. It is characterized by a "selective response by animals to particular stimuli" which can be observed as behavior.Bateson, Paul Patrick Gordon. "Mate Choice." Mate Choice, Cambridge University Press, 1985 In other words, before an animal engages with a potential mate, they first evaluate various aspects of that mate which are indicative of quality—such as the resources or phenotypes they have—and evaluate whether or not those particular Phenotypic trait, trait(s) are somehow beneficial to them. The evaluation will then incur a response of some sort. These mechanisms are a part of evolutionary change because they operate in a way that causes the qualities that are desired in a mate to be more frequently passed on to each generation over time. For example, if female peacocks desire mates who have a colourful plumage, then this trait will increase in frequency over time as male peacocks with a colourful ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Multiple Sexual Ornaments
Many species have multiple sexual ornaments, whereby females select mating partners using several cues instead of only one cue. Whereas this phenomenon is self-evident and hence long recognized, adaptive explanations of why females use several instead of only one signal have been formulated relatively recently. Several hypotheses exist, but mutually exclusive tests are still lacking. Hypotheses There are several hypotheses that attempt to explain why a male would have multiple sexual ornaments. Multiple messages hypothesis The multiple message hypothesis states that different ornaments signal different properties of an individual's overall quality. Models support the possibility that this hypothesis is evolutionarily stable but empirical tests are lacking. Some ornaments represent long-term or short-term changes in overall condition. Elegant plumes in a bird or antlers in a deer grown once a year could signal the overall condition of an animal during the long period of growth; ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lemon Laws
Lemon laws are laws that provide a remedy for purchasers of cars and other consumer goods in order to compensate for products that repeatedly fail to meet standards of quality and performance. Although many types of products can be defective, the term "lemon" is mostly used to describe defective motor vehicles, such as cars, trucks, and motorcycles. United States Lemon law protection arises under state law, with every U.S. state and the District of Columbia having its own lemon law. Although the exact criteria vary by state, new vehicle lemon laws require that an auto manufacturer repurchase a vehicle that has a significant defect that the manufacturer is unable to repair within a reasonable amount of time. Lemon laws consider the nature of the problem with the vehicle, the number of days that the vehicle is unavailable to the consumer for service of the same mechanical issue, and the number of repair attempts made. If repairs cannot be completed within the total number of days de ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Dilbert Future
Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the ''Dilbert'' comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire. Adams worked in various corporate roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. While working at Pacific Bell in 1989, Adams created ''Dilbert.'' By the mid-1990s, the strip had gained national prominence in the United States and began to reach a worldwide audience. ''Dilbert'' remained popular throughout the following decades, spawning several books written by Adams. Adams writes in a satirical way about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in modern corporations. In addition, Adams has written books in various other areas, including the pandeistic spiritual novella '' God's Debris'' and books on political and management topics, including '' Loserthink''. In February 2023, ''Dilbert'' was dropped by numerous newspapers and its distribu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, Payday loans in the United States, payday lenders, mortgage-servicing operations, foreclosure relief services, debt collectors, for-profit colleges, and other financial companies operating in the United States. The agency was originally proposed in 2007 by Elizabeth Warren while she was a law professor and she played an instrumental role in its establishment. The CFPB's creation was authorized by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, whose passage in 2010 was a legislative response to the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession, and is an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve. The agency has established or proposed rules to cap overdraft charges and credit card late fees; prohibit medical debt f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dilbert
''Dilbert'' is an American comic strip written and illustrated by Scott Adams, first published on April 16, 1989. It is known for its satire, satirical office humor about a White-collar worker, white-collar, micromanagement, micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert (character), Dilbert as the title role, title character. It has led to dozens of books, an Dilbert (TV series), animated television series, a Dilbert's Desktop Games, video game, and hundreds of themed merchandising, merchandise items. ''Dilbert Future'' and ''The Joy of Work'' are among the best-selling books in the series. In 1997, Adams received the National Cartoonists Society National Cartoonists Society#Reuben Award, Reuben Award and the Newspaper Comic Strip Award for his work. ''Dilbert'' appears online and as of 2013 was published daily in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries and 25 languages. In 2023, ''Dilbert'' was dropped by numerous independent newspapers as well as its distributor, Andrews McMeel Syndicat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Samsung SGH-P520 Giorgio Armani
The Samsung SGH-P520 is a smartphone created by Samsung Electronics, announced on September 24, 2007, at a Giorgio Armani fashion show in Milan in a partnership between the two companies. It is the successor to the Samsung P310 (and the P300 before that), classified by Samsung as a " credit card-phone". Originally retailing at 750 euros ($1100), it has a 2.6-inch touchscreen with haptic feedback similar to that of the LG Viewty and a 3-megapixel camera. It uses Samsung's "Croix" user interface. The Samsung Giorgio Armani's design would heavily influence the Samsung Tocco handset in 2008. Reception ''Mobile-review.com'' praised the screen quality as being among the best, but the reviewer found texting on it "fiddly". ''TechRadar'' liked the slim and stylish design along with the haptic display, but criticised the user interface and lack of 3G or Wi-Fi. ''Softpedia'' called it a 'copycat' of LG's Prada Prada S.p.A. (, ; ) is an Italian luxury fashion house founded in 191 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |