The Effect of Knowledge on Decision-Making in the Context of Organic Cotton Clothing

Abstract

). Consumers constantly gather information and store it in memory as knowledge, use this knowledge in evaluating and choosing products (Murray & Schlacter, 1990). Consumer knowledge may influence how consumers process product information provided by apparel manufacturers on hang tags and product labels and what products they buy. Labels and hang tags for apparel products were found to provide consumers with useful information on decision making (Chowdhary, 2003). With growing interests in sustainability issues and environmental concerns among apparel consumers, apparel manufacturers have provided information on their socially responsible practices including their commitment to the environment, fair labor, fair trade, and other social causes on product labels (Jana, 2007). Dickson (2000) studied the relationship between consumer knowledge and the intention to purchase apparel from socially responsible businesses and found that although the overall knowledge about apparel industry practices was fairly low, consumers who were more knowledgeable about the apparel industry were significantly more concerned about workers in clothing manufacturing businesses and showed greater support for socially responsible businesses. However, little research has been conducted regarding how consumer knowledge relates to the use of product information provided on labels when consumers purchase organic cotton apparel products. It is the intention of this study to understand the effect of consumer knowledge on the use of product labels to evaluate products in the context of purchasing organic cotton clothing. In addition, this study investigated how consumer knowledge influences attitude towards organic cotton clothing and price acceptance of organic cotton clothing.The concept of consumer knowledge in the field of consumer behavior has been applied to provide a theoretical framework for this study. McNeal and McDaniel (1981) state that the concept of knowledge is fundamental to understand consumer behavior theories including perceived risk, cognitive dissonance, social influences, new product adoption, self-concept, decision-making, and attitude formation and change. Rao and Sieben (1992) examined how prior knowledge on apparel quality and relevant issues relates to price acceptability and information examination patterns. In their study, low-knowledge subjects showed lower price limits than moderately or highly knowledgeable subjects when they were asked to indicate upper (high but acceptable) and lower (low but acceptable) price points for a blazer. It was also found that extremely knowledgeable subjects relied more on extrinsic product information in assessing product quality while moderately knowledgeable subjects used intrinsic information for 91

Effect of consumer self‐confidence on information search and dissemination: Mediating role of subjective knowledge

“…Consumers with high subjective knowledge tend to share information, which also reinforces their positive knowledge perceptions (Oh & Abraham, ; Packard & Wooten, ). Similarly, Donoghue et al () found that in case of dissatisfaction, consumers with high subjective knowledge are likely to take public action, which means they will complain to retailers, manufacturer, or third parties.…”

“…Consumer knowledge is a primary variable influencing the consumer behaviour (Brucks, ; Hadar et al, ; Oh & Abraham, ; Park et al, ). Knowledge includes three components, objective knowledge, subjective knowledge, and past experiences (Alba & Hutchinson, ; Brucks, ; Flynn & Goldsmith, ; Park & Lessig, ; Xiao, Ahn, Serido, & Shim, ).…”

“…Subjective knowledge influences the IS behaviour (Brucks, ); moreover, it is considered to be a better predictor of the search behaviour than objective knowledge (Moorman et al, ; Oh & Abraham, ; Raju et al, ). Subjective knowledge can be considered to be the result of highly objective knowledge and the previous experience (Raju et al, ), thereby mediating the effect on decision outcome.…”

Is Loan Shark an Alternative? The Intentions to Take a Loan from Loan Sharks in Indonesia

“…Elements of knowledge can be classified into subjective, objective, and use. The basis of perception is known as subjective knowledge, while perception based on facts is known as objective knowledge and experience-based knowledge is known as usage knowledge (Aji, 2017;Oh & Abraham, 2016). The fundamental idea of a user's intent to accept and utilize loan shark services depends greatly on their level of usury knowledge (Jing et al, 2019;Lin et al, 2019).…”

The effect of consumer self-confidence on information search and share intention

“…As predicted in H7 and H8 , subjective knowledge has a positive and significant relationship with information search and information sharing, respectively. According to Brucks (1985), subjective knowledge profoundly influences the information search behavior compared to OK (Oh and Abraham, 2016). As a result, consumers of high subjective knowledge tend to search and share more information because this information signifies the level of consumer confidence (Park and Lessing, 1981).…”