Consumers on the Web: A study of pre-purchase search

The objective of this study is twofold: develop a holistic conceptual model of consumer external information search on the Web, and to conduct an empirical test of the model. Previous research in this area has taken two major themes: (1) consumer focused research concentrates on product information search in traditional shopping environments and (2) Web and system focused research is predominantly descriptive and exploratory. Few studies have focused on pre-purchase information search of services as the product class of interest. The unique focus of this research is to investigate the inherent individual level factors that influence external information search on the Web, to investigate acquired individual level factors that influence external information search on the Web and to explore the relationship between these factors and Web external information search. The assumption is that as the Web “producticizes” service information, a model developed for product pre-purchase information search can be applied to services. Results support these assumptions.; An empirical study was conducted using a Web based survey tool for the main phase of the research. The total number of contacts made with potential respondents was 2489. From these initial contacts, 453 usable responses resulted, with an effective response rate of 23%.; The model includes constructs of need for cognition, optimum stimulation level, online search self-efficacy, category knowledge, technology expertise, online search expertise, Web dependency for search and involvement. These inherent and acquired individual level factors help explain the amount of online information search conducted.; The study results contribute to a holistic conceptual model for consumer external information search that combines factors from the fields of consumer and information behavior and is applicable to either products or services. The significance of this dissertation further lies in its contribution to extending the consumer information search and information behavior research agendas. Major contributions are the synthesis of the literature from the fields of information, consumer and organizational information search and the development of the online search self-efficacy construct. Results corroborate the relationships between optimum stimulation level, category knowledge, technology expertise, Web dependency for search and age with amount of online search. A significant negative relationship is observed between amount of online search and online search self-efficacy. Additionally, interesting results are detected between the dependent variable and need for cognition and category involvement constructs. Variations in the type and amount of specific search show that pre-purchase information search has changed for services as a result of the maturing of the Internet as a major source of pre-purchase information.