| Consumers often use underlying market heuristics, or sets of inferential associative belief structures when making shopping decisions. Using concepts and findings from the fields of economics, marketing, and information economics, the current study builds on past research by developing a conceptual framework which depicts how buyer and seller beliefs relate to intended consumer behavior. Hypotheses concerning influences on belief set construction and use are drawn from the model and tested with a questionnaire method. Influences tested through the hypotheses include advanced educational training in the fields of economics, consumer science, and marketing, as well as the individual difference variables need for cognition and associative belief aptitude.; The findings indicate that the individual difference variables influence the consistency with which the internal associative belief structures are used, although educational training was not shown to be a significant influence. These findings advance current theory in the information search literature, and have implications for marketing and education. The contributions of the current study are discussed and directions for future research are outlined. |
