Marketing of Credence Goods: the Impact of Expertise on Buyer’S Information Search Strategies

ABSTRACT - Consumers are often confronted with credence products in the marketplace. These are products which the buyers may find impossible to evaluate even after purchase and consumption. Little is known about how consumers search for and evaluate these credence products which leads to their ultimate acceptance.

Citation:

Jochen Wirtz and Swee Cheok Teo (2001) ,"Marketing of Credence Goods: the Impact of Expertise on Buyer’S Information Search Strategies", in AP - Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 4, eds. Paula M. Tidwell and Thomas E. Muller, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 127.

Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 4, 2001      Page 127

MARKETING OF CREDENCE GOODS: THE IMPACT OF EXPERTISE ON BUYER’S INFORMATION SEARCH STRATEGIES

Jochen Wirtz, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Swee Cheok Teo, National University of Singapore, Singapore

ABSTRACT -

Consumers are often confronted with credence products in the marketplace. These are products which the buyers may find impossible to evaluate even after purchase and consumption. Little is known about how consumers search for and evaluate these credence products which leads to their ultimate acceptance.

Whereas past research has often viewed self-assessed and objective knowledge to be identical (e.g., Bruck 1985; Park et al 1988), the present research indicates that the feeling of knowing and what is actually know does not correspond for the case of a credence good. The findings in this study suggest that the mechanisms through which these two knowledge constructs affect information search may be different, as illustrated by the distinctive patterns of behavior from novices (buyers who know that they do not know that much), act smarts (buyers who think that they know a lot when they actually do not know that much) and experts (buyers who know that they know).

This study showed distinct patterns of information source for each buyer group. In particular, expertise had an influence on the size and characteristics of the buyers’ evoked set. In addition, expertise was found to be an important determinant of brand inertia/loyalty.

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