Inexperienced Consumers' Judgment of the Quality of Household Appliances

Consumers who have had limited product related consumer socialization and who adopt new life styles later in life, face the paradox of progress. Their inability to cope with a choice explosion because of limited cognitive structure that could guide their buyer decisions creates fertile ground for exploitation in the market place. A questionnaire was distributed to consumers with different levels of product experience and ownership, to compare their judgment of the quality of household appliances. The apparent reliance on surrogate indicators by all groups was later clarified by the poor performance of even the experienced group in the product knowledge test.



Citation:

Alet C Erasmus, Mirriam Makgopa, and Mphatso Kachale (2005) ,"Inexperienced Consumers' Judgment of the Quality of Household Appliances", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Karin M. Ekstrom and Helene Brembeck, Goteborg, Sweden : Association for Consumer Research.

Authors

Alet C Erasmus, Senior lecturer, Dept of Consumer Science, University of Pretoria
Mirriam Makgopa, Master's student, University of Pretoria
Mphatso Kachale, Master's student, University of Pretoria



Volume

E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7 | 2005



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