| Progress in developing relationships between perceived risk and its antecedent and criterion variables has been hampered by the lack of valid measures and a theoretical structure to guide its application. The objectives of this dissertation have been to develop a consumer-based, valid measure of perceived risk, and a theoretical structure suitable for applying the measure to substantive marketing research issues. The financial industry was chosen for the domain of the research.;Safety risk and personal risk combined to provide an analysis of perceived risk that has not been observed in earlier research. The two dimensions characterized the consumer as an evaluator, who distinguishes between the risk involved in purchasing and using an object and his or her ability to cope with the risk.;Social risk provided an assessment of the perceived social acceptability of an object, and control risk reflected the concerns an individual has about losing control of invested funds.;A model was developed that portrayed perceived risk as perceptual meaning. The construct was operationalized as a mediating variable between service features and evaluative judgment. Empirical verification showed the model to accurately represent the relationships between service features, perceived risk, and evaluative judgment, providing information about investors' preferences for service features.;Focus group interviews were used to provide the basis for developing a set of consumer-based semantic differential scales, which were evaluated for reliability and validity. The evaluations established four valid dimensions of perceived risk: safety risk, personal risk, social risk, and control risk.;The perceived risk model, by including descriptors of individual and situational characteristics, provides guidance for theory based segmentation strategies.;Application of the perceived risk model to areas outside of the financial domain are possible because of the potential generalizability of the safety, personal, and social risk dimensions. Expanding the perceptual dimension beyond perceived risk would also give the perceived risk model the potential to become a consumer attitude model, with more explanatory power than currently exists in popular models. |
