Special Session Summary Using Bits to Get Bites: Perspectives on Measuring Information in Electronic Environments

Citation:

Nicholas H. Lurie (2000) ,"Special Session Summary Using Bits to Get Bites: Perspectives on Measuring Information in Electronic Environments", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 27, eds. Stephen J. Hoch and Robert J. Meyer, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 287.

Advances in Consumer Research Volume 27, 2000      Page 287

SPECIAL SESSION SUMMARY

USING BITS TO GET BITES: PERSPECTIVES ON MEASURING INFORMATION IN ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENTS

Nicholas H. Lurie, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

SESSION OVERVIEW

In a knowledge economy, learning how to measure and value information is of crucial importance. In this session, Nicholas Lurie looked at how the information provided by Web page categories can be measured and used to predict consumer decision making; Rashi Glazer showed how the INFOVALUE procedure can be used to determine the value of customer information; and Xavier DrFze and Frantois-Xavier Hussherr presented an approach to measuring advertising effectiveness that takes into account the way in which the Web differs from traditional advertising media.

SUMMARY OF INDIVIDUAL PAPERS

 

"CATEGORICALLY SUPERIOR?: MEASURING ELECTRONIC INFORMATION STRUCTURES FOR DECISION MAKING"

Nicholas H. Lurie, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Given the multiplicity of ways in which electronic information environments can be organized, metrics are needed in order to make comparisons between them. Results from two experiments suggest that search efficiency improves with higher levels of information transfer and that these improvements in search efficiency are not associated with lower choice quality. A second study found that category-attribute information transfer and cognitive effort associated with the decision task interact to affect decision quality. This suggests that 1) measures of information structure alone can provide insights into decision making; 2) determination of the "best" category structure depends on the nature of the decision task.

 

"MEASURING CUSTOMER INFORMATION: THE INFOVALUE PROCESS"

Rashi Glazer, University of California, Berkeley

This paper describes the use of the INFOVALUE procedure designed to measure the economic value of information stored in a Customer Information File (CIF). The paper begins with a description of the basic structure of a typical CIF and then reports the results of a multi-firm empirical study in which the INFOVALUE procedure has been successfully used to quantify the value of the CIF in a number of organizations. The paper concludes with some generalizations about the challenges involved in measuring information-related "goods" that follow from the unique properties of information itselfCin particular, the need to integrate both the object of knowledge and the subject (or user) of knowledge into the measurement process.

 

"INTERNET ADVERTISING: IS ANYBODY WATCHING?"

Xavier Dreze, University of Southern California

Frantois-Xavier Hussherr, Ecole National SupTrieure de TTlTcommunication, Paris

Click-through rates have emerged as the de facto measure of Internet advertising effectiveness. Unfortunately, click-through rates are plummeting. This decline prompts four critical questions: (1) why do banner ads seem to be ineffective; (2) what can advertisers do to improve their effectiveness; (3) does an immediate measure such as click-through rate under-value online advertising; and, (4) are memory-based measures such as recall or awareness more appropriate? To address these questions, Professor DrFze and his colleague utilized an eye-tracking device to investigate online surfers’ attention to online advertising. They then conducted a large-scale survey of Internet users’ recall, recognition, and awareness of banner advertising.

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