The article presents an experiment that explores the behavior of a firm in a competitive market. The main problem of the participant in the experiment, as the firm's head, is the choice between individual benefit and collective needs. The first conclusion suggests that information on the contribution of individual workers affects the decision-making on the distribution of total profit. More than a half of the participants refused the individual appropriation of profit and distributed it among other employees. Moreover, a significant part of those who decided to distribute the results within the group was guided by their own ideas about the justness of such distribution. More than half of the participants in the experiment made an egoistic choice: 45.8% of the participants decided to individual appropriate the results of joint work, 11.2% distributed the profit in favor of ineffective participants. 43% of the participants in the experiment made a fair choice. Of these, 34.6% distributed the received profit equally, and 8.4% distributed the profit in proportion to the contribution to the overall result. The second conclusion is that when choosing between maximizing profits and ensuring employment, a large proportion of participants also refused the optimal volume of production and provided an opportunity to work for inefficient excess employees. Such results indicate a significant impact of social and group effects on the market behavior of firms, even in a competitive market. Understanding the impact of these effects can change the perception of firm behavior that was previously thought to be more understandable than consumer behavior.
An Experimental Study of Retailer-Brand Collaboration: Duration and Perceived Fit Towards Consumer Behavior
