Professor Earns Best Paper Honor For 'Theory Of Intraperson Games'

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (December 19, 2007) – The editorial board of the Journal of Marketing has selected Min Ding, associate professor of marketing at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, as the 2007 recipient of the Harold H. Maynard Award for his paper "A Theory of Intraperson Games," which appeared in the April 2007 issue of the journal.

The Maynard Award is presented each year to the author(s) of the Journal of Marketing paper that has most significantly contributed to marketing theory and thought. Ding will receive the award, which includes a plaque and cash prize, at the 2008 Winter Marketing Educators' Conference in Austin, Texas.

In "A Theory of Intraperson Games," Ding connects social science theories of multiple inner preferences—often called "selves" or "agents"—with standard multiparty game theory to propose a new theory of "intraperson" games. Ding identifies two types of inner preferences—the efficiency agent and the equity agent—that must resolve conflicts in order for a person to reach a decision.

The efficiency agent, according to Ding's paper, attempts to maximize the utility for all of the selves that reside in a person's mind. The equity agent, meanwhile, attempts to balance the utility across the selves so that each is served in an equitable manner. Ding's theory states that "an individual decision is the outcome of the strategic interaction between the efficiency agent and the equity agent."

"If a person consists of multiple selves, he or she must confront the trade-off between efficiency and equity to make decisions," Ding writes. "Although individual decision making attempts to make the person better off overall (efficiency), people also consciously and unconsciously work to ensure that their selves take turns to dominate (equity), even if this means lower overall utility."

To illustrate the theory, Ding offers the example of a family of two parents and multiple children.

"One parent's objective could be to ensure that the sum of utilities for all children is maximized, even if that means giving one child most of the resources and minimum amounts to the others," Ding explains in his paper. "Another parent's objective could be to ensure that each child derives a minimum utility from the decision and that the maximum difference among all children does not exceed a ceiling level. Thus, family decisions are the result of discussion and compromise between the two parents."

Ding's theory argues that this conflict of maximizing efficiency versus maximizing equity is resolved in people's minds as they attempt to make a decision. He presents a quantitative framework to model individual decisions as the outcome of the interaction of these multiple selves.

"A Theory of Intraperson Games" is available online at www.planetding.org/aboutme/files/TIG.pdf.

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REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.

Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.

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