The effects of product expertise on consumer evaluations of new-product concepts

Can Consumers Forgo the Need to Touch Products? An Investigation of Nonhaptic Situational Factors in an Online Context

“…One implication is that for nonexperts, written (nonhaptic) information provided via the retailer's Web site may be sufficient in creating beliefs and attitudes about the product, which can consequently impact purchase intentions. This is consistent with de Bont and Schoormans's () argument that nonexpert consumers follow a holistic information processing and consider limited salient attributes of the product (which are often provided in written descriptions). Thus, product nonexperts may not perceive a decision as difficult or complex, because they are not so acquainted with relevant features (Selnes & Howell, ).…”

“…Alba and Hutchinson () defined PE as the ability to perform product‐related tasks successfully. In fact, expertise is a qualitative aspect of consumer knowledge that can be retail, product, or brand related (de Bont & Schoormans, ). The knowledge of expert consumers facilitates retrieval of relevant information from memory and enables better integration of new information with a priori stored information (Fiske, Kinder, & Larter, ).…”

“…Experts have a more detailed product information structure and a more detailed cognitive structure, which facilitates better discrimination between information units. Thus, consumers with higher levels of expertise have a more detailed idea of the product and are better able to evaluate products (specifically new products) in a given product category (de Bont & Schoormans, ).…”

“…Empirical evidence suggests that higher levels of expertise are consistent with detailed, analytical product information retrieval and processing as opposed to more holistic and broad approaches (Maheswaran & Sternthal, ). In holistic information processing, consumers attend to only one or two major attributes such as price or design and may possibly downplay other attributes, such as touch (de Bont & Schoormans, ). A high‐NFT consumer prefers to obtain detailed haptic information instead of broader, coarse information about a product's haptic qualities that may be obtained through a visual preview (Peck & Childers, ; Yazdanparast & Spears, ).…”

The Effect of Overconfidence and Underconfidence on Consumer Value

“…Previous marketing research has investigated the effect of consumer knowledge on consumer behavior by investigating objective or subjective knowledge. It has been found that objective knowledge impacts a consumer's capability and motivation for searching (Brucks, 1985), processing (Cowley & Mitchell, 2003;Hong & Sternthal, 2010;Lee & Lee, 2011), and evaluating (de Bont & Schoormans, 1995;Herr, 1989;Roy & Cornwell, 2004) relevant information. Subjective knowledge affects choice confidence (Park & Lessig, 2003), decision time (Park & Lessing, 2003), service quality evaluation (Andaleeb & Basu, 1994), product search strategy (Moorman, Diehl, Brinberg, & Kidwell, 2004), and perceived value (Barrutia & Gilsanz, 2012).…”