Involvement and consumer evaluation of goods and services: The effect on information search and goal clarity

The primary purpose of this study was to examine consumers' pre-purchase information usage for products and services. While this area has received widespread research attention in the past three decades due in part to corresponding growth of services in our worldwide economy, this study added to our body of marketing literature by examining the information consumers' use among products and services of varying consumer evaluation difficulties. This research used the Economics of Information Theory (EOI) and an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) perspective to examine the relationship between product and service evaluation difficulty, consumer involvement, pre-purchase information usage and consumer goal clarity. The overriding marketing question that this study attempted to answer was: How do products and services, differing in levels of consumer evaluation difficulty and involvement, affect consumers' use of pre-purchase information and their ability to effectively perform his/her role as a consumer?; The sample for this study was drawn from 500 college students at a Mid-South public institution. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of three pre-tested products or services (casual clothing, dinner at a nice restaurant, and car repair). The survey instrument, a pen and paper questionnaire, included several demographic questions. The scales used in the study were established marketing scales or were extensions and refinements of established marketing scales. The model includes four constructs: involvement, evaluation difficulty, information sources and goal clarity.; The major contribution of this research is the reconceptualization of the product/service evaluation continuum into a two-dimensioned framework. Other contributions to this theoretical framework include: involvement's role in the evaluation continuum, and evaluation dimensions (when evaluation occurs---pre- or post-purchase and level of difficulty) as a way to classify and examine products and services. Contributions to scale extension and refinement include the model's six-item two-dimensioned evaluation scale.; The tests results enhance our understanding of the relationships between product/service evaluation, involvement, information search and goal clarity. The consumer is most certain of his/her purchase when a product/service is easy to evaluate both pre- and post-purchase and least certain when evaluation is difficult both before and after purchase. Greater enjoyment, interest and risk probability in a product or service encourage increased information search. Consumer-dominated information affects the relationship between the risk dimensions of involvement (social risk and risk probability) and goal clarity, whereas for the other dimensions of involvement (interest and enjoyment) consumer-dominated information does not affect this relationship.