Objective: This study aims to explore the perceived dependence on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools among young adults and examine the relative reinforcing value of AI chatbots use compared to monetary rewards, applying a behavioral economics approach.Participants/methods: A total of 420 university students from Bogotá, Colombia, participated in an online survey. The study employed a Multiple Choice Procedure (MCP) to assess the relative reinforcement between different durations of GenAI use (1, 2, and 4 weeks) and monetary rewards, which varied in amount and delay. Additionally, an adapted AI Dependence Scale evaluated levels of dependence on AI tools. Data analysis included repeated measures ANOVA to examine the effects of reward magnitude and delay on choices, and correlations to assess the relationship between perceived dependence and reinforcement values.Results: Participants reported low average dependence on AI tools (mean AI Dependence Scale score = 65.6), with no significant gender differences. MCP findings indicated significant differences in crossover points across varying durations or delays for AI chatbots use, suggesting a higher relative value of use for the option to use AI chatbots immediately. The average reinforcement value for AI use versus monetary rewards did significantly vary with reward magnitude. On the other hand, significant differences were found in the levels of perceived dependence on AI, according to the average daily time of AI tool use.Conclusion: The results suggest that young adults exhibit low perceived dependence on GenAI tools but show differential reinforcement values based on usage duration or delay conditions. This behavioral economics approach provides novel insights into decision-making patterns related to AI chatbots use, emphasizing the need for further research to understand the psychological and social factors influencing dependence on AI technologies.

The emergence of a conception of the marketing firm (Foxall, 1999a) conceived within behavioral psychology and based on a corresponding model of consumer choice, (Foxall, 1990/2004) permits an assessment of the levels of behavioral and organizational analysis amenable to neuroscientific examination. This paper explores the ways in which the bilateral contingencies that link the marketing firm with its consumerate allow appropriate levels of organizational neuroscientific analysis to be specified. Having described the concept of the marketing firm and the model of consumer behavior on which it is based, the paper analyzes bilateral contingencies at the levels of (i) market exchange, (ii) emotional reward, and (iii) neuroeconomics. Market exchange emerges as a level of analysis that lends itself predominantly to the explanation of firm—consumerate interactions in terms of the super-personal level of reinforcing and punishing contingencies: the marketing firm can be treated as a contextual or operant system in its own right. However, the emotional reward and neuroeconomic levels of analysis should be confined to the personal level of analysis represented by individual managers on the one hand and individual consumers on the other. This also entails a level of abstraction but it is one that can be satisfactorily handled in terms of the concept of bilateral contingency.

Evaluation of firm performance must consider the effects that its products and services have upon consumers. This can be accomplished when measures of consumer behavior inform marketing strategies. Consumer behavior analysis, a field of research that integrates operant behavioral economics and marketing, has developed several measures of consumer buying patterns based on the identification of the types of reinforcement, informational or utilitarian, that are programmed by different products and brands, and of the scope of consumer behavior setting. The present paper describes research that adopted some of these measures and the main results derived from them. Such studies have shown, for instance, that consumers have brand repertoires that include brands offering similar levels of reinforcement, that they tend to change the quantity they buy as a function of package size, price promotions, and utilitarian and informational reinforcement, that consumer individual differences tend to remain relatively stable across time, and that more open settings increase product search duration, decrease the essential value of brands and increase consumers’ reports related to dominance of shopping environments and approach responses. Moreover, these measures of consumer behavior can be integrated with measures of firm behavior to evaluate firm performance, on the basis of an operant interpretation of firm behavior. This paper explains some of these integrated measures and describes results that have shown, for instance, how increases in spending in marketing activities is related to increases in profitability.

The theory of the marketing firm locates the rationale of the modern business enterprise that lies in its responding profitably to the imperatives of marketing orientation. Economic theories of the firm generally fail to recognize these imperatives, enhanced consumer choice and sophistication, which entail marketing orientation as the rationale of the firm. The paper propose a competence theory of the firm as a metacontingency and examines the bilateral contingencies by which firms link to their consumerates, which indicate their capacities for customer orientation. The marketing firm emerges as a means of encapsulating entrepreneurship, economizing on transaction costs, and enabling the management of marketing specialization.