The Economics of Consumer Information Acquisition

1980 ◽  
Vol 53 (S3) ◽  
pp. S143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis L. Wilde
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Liping Liu ◽  
Chih-Cheng Fang

With the rapid development of "Internet plus", the number of Internet users in China has increased rapidly, and the number of active users of social media software ranks first in the world. Large Numbers of network users are also potential consumer groups. Social media influences other consumers through consumer interaction and social interaction, and consumers are transformed into active information acquisition rather than passive information reception. Word of mouth marketing on social media has become one of the hottest research fields. Based on the information adoption model, this study explores the impact of internet celebrity word-of-mouth communication on consumer information sharing from four dimensions: internet celebrity word-of-mouth communication, relationship quality, face consciousness, and consumer information sharing and establishes a research model to provide references and suggestions for subsequent researchers and enterprise management.


1978 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 532-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Jacoby ◽  
Robert W. Chestnut ◽  
William A. Fisher

A behavioral process method was used to explore the relationship of individual difference factors to consumer information acquisition behavior. Findings included: (1) the mean proportion of available information actually acquired was 2%, and (2) information search was concentrated on six of the 35 available information dimensions; increased information acquisition was related (3) positively to the product's importance for the individual, (4) positively to being an optimizer rather than a satisficer, (5) positively to high amounts of past purchasing experience with the product, and (6) negatively to attitudinal brand loyalty.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Hepworth ◽  
Timothy Brick ◽  
Meg Small

Abstract Objectives Information satisfaction is an essential component of the acceptability and efficacy of nutrition education programming. However, few studies have explicitly sought to identify factors associated with consumer information satisfaction, particularly regarding infant feeding information. This is a critical gap given the urgent need for evidence-based nutrition and obesity prevention guidance for infants 0–24 months old. This study explored how parents’ satisfaction with infant feeding information was associated with information need and information acquisition characteristics. Methods First-time parents (N = 423; 89% Female; 75% White; 26% WIC participants) of infants ≤24 months of age completed an online survey on their most recent search for advice or information about infant feeding. Participants reported their search topic, information need (i.e., information urgency, topic interest), and the information channels they accessed during this search. Participants then reported on information acquisition characteristics (i.e., perceived utility, trust, clarity, ease of information acquisition) and information satisfaction for up to two randomly selected information channels, which constituted the repeated measures aspect of this cross-sectional study. Linear mixed models estimated parents’ information satisfaction from information need and information acquisition characteristics, controlling for education. Results Descriptive information on search topics and information channels is presented in Table 1. As shown in Table 2, all information acquisition characteristics were positively associated with information satisfaction, with the strongest associations observed for perceived utility and trust. Information need characteristics were not associated with information satisfaction. Conclusions Parents’ satisfaction with infant feeding information was strongly and positively associated with perceived information utility and trust. Future research on nutrition education programming development should explore how content and delivery approaches promote consumers’ perceived utility and trust by drawing on existing research on common elements of effective evidence-based interventions and cognitive heuristics of trust. Funding Sources National Science Foundation (NSF); USDA; College-level dissertation award. Supporting Tables, Images and/or Graphs


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro M. Gardete ◽  
Liang Guo

Consumers can decide whether to acquire more information about their valuations prior to purchase. In this paper, we examine pricing and advertising strategies when consumers can engage in prepurchase information acquisition. We show that consumer information acquisition can increase valuation heterogeneity and undermine a firm’s ability to extract consumer surplus. As a result, interestingly, a higher product quality can exert a nonmonotonic impact on equilibrium information acquisition, hurt firm profitability, and lead to lower consumer surplus. We also demonstrate that prepurchase information acquisition can be an endogenous mechanism to enable credible advertising in a cheap-talk setting. We show that quality claims in advertisements can be informative even when the firm can freely misrepresent its advertising message. Informative advertising can arise because a higher perceived quality can not only increase consumers’ expected value, but it also induces more information acquisition and thus hurts the firm’s ability to extract consumer surplus. This novel explanation for the credibility of cheap-talk advertising is distinguished from those identified in the literature (e.g., matching between firm types and heterogenous consumers, restrictive communication on multidimensional attributes). Moreover, we show that a higher quality can soften competition by inducing more information acquisition, thus benefiting the rival firm’s profitability. This paper was accepted by Matthew Shum, marketing.


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