Consumer Informedness and Firm Information Strategy

Consumer informedness plays a critical role in determining consumer choice in the presence of infor-mation technology (IT) deployed by competing firms in the marketplace. Using data collected through a series of stated choice experiments in two different research contexts, we examine how consumer ch...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: LI, Ting, KAUFFMAN, Robert J., VAN HECK, Eric, VERVEST, Peter, DELLAERT, Benedict G.C.
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/2194
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2014.0521
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Consumer informedness plays a critical role in determining consumer choice in the presence of infor-mation technology (IT) deployed by competing firms in the marketplace. Using data collected through a series of stated choice experiments in two different research contexts, we examine how consumer charac-teristics and observed behaviors moderate the influence of price and product informedness on consumer choice. The results indicate that different types of consumer informedness amplify different consumer behaviors in specific consumer segments. In particular, we found that price informedness is more influen-tial among consumers in the commodity segment. They exhibit greater trading down behavior, which represents stronger preferences for choosing the products that provide the best price. In contrast, product informedness is more influential among consumers in the differentiated segment. This group exhibits greater trading out behavior, involving stronger preferences for choosing products that best suit their specific needs. These results suggest that firm information strategy should take into account consumers’ characteristics, their past observed behaviors, and the impact of consumer informedness. We also discuss the theoretical contributions of this research and its broader implications for firm-level information strategy.