This article presents the results of a meta-analysis of empirical findings associated with the relationship between objective knowledge (OK; i.e., accurate stored information that consumers possess) and subjective knowledge (SK; i.e., consumers' perceptions of their own knowledge). Results of the meta-analysis reveal that OK-SK relationships from prior research were stronger for products versus nonproducts, for public versus private goods, and for SK measures containing an expert versus an "average" standard of comparison. These results and other findings offer a series of implications for future research regarding investigations of consumer knowledge. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

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Although a considerable amount of research has investigated consumer knowledge of individual prices, consumer knowledge of marketer pricing tactics (e.g., partitioned prices, pennies a day) has received only limited attention. In the current research, a model depicting hypothesized antecedents of consumer knowledge (both accurate and self-perceived) regarding pricing tactics marketers use is proposed and then investigated in two studies. Tests of the model provided support for the hypothesized antecedents of both objective and subjective pricing tactic knowledge and suggested that experience is a key moderator of the objective pricing tactic knowledge-subjective pricing tactic knowledge relationship. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Sellers have considerable flexibility in terms of how to present pricerelated information and claims in the marketplace. Indeed, sellers often employ a variety of pricing tactics, that is, tactics used by sellers to generate favorable price perceptions regarding their brands, stores, and/or offerings. Examples of such pricing tactics include "MSRP $99.99, sale price $59.99" (i.e., manufacturers' suggested retail prices used as external comparisons), "$29.95 plus $5.00 shipping & handling" (i.e., partitioned pricing), "For only 72¢ a day" (i.e., pennies-a-day pricing), and "always low prices" (i.e., everyday low pricing).Consumers have undoubtedly encountered a number of pricing tactics as a result of their lifetime shopping experiences, and in the process, may have developed knowledge regarding these tactics. Although prior research has investigated consumer responses to individual pricing tactics (e.g., pennies a day-Gourville, 1998; partitioned pricing-Morwitz, Greenleaf, & Johnson, 1998), less is known regarding consumer knowledge of marketer pricing tactics. Most research studies that have investigated consumer knowledge within the pricing domain have focused on assessing consumer knowledge of individual prices (e.g., Dickson & Sawyer, 1990; Vanhuele, Laurent, & Dreze, in press). The focus of the present research is upon consumer knowledge of marketer pricing tactics.Recently, Hardesty, Bearden, and Carlson (2006) examined the effects of varying levels of objective persuasion knowledge regarding pricing tactics by investigating the effects of such knowledge on responses to marketplace offers. As a subdomain of overall consumer persuasion knowledge (Friestad & Wright 1994), pricing tactic persuasion knowledge was defined as knowledge of pricing tactics used by sellers to generate favorable price perceptions regarding their brands, stores, and/or offerings. Hardesty et al. (2006) found that consumer responses to pricing tactics were affected by the level of accurate/inaccurate knowledge held for such tactics. For example, in one of their studies, consumers high in pricing tactic persuasion knowledge were less interested in purchasing an item offered with a tensile price claim than consumers low in such knowledge.Although Hardesty et al. (2006) demonstrated the effects of objec...

Objective. To investigate the impact of the HCAHPS report of patient experiences and word-of-mouth narratives on consumers' hospital choice. Data Sources. Online consumer research panel of U.S. adults ages 18 and older. Study Design/Data Collection/Extraction Methods. In an experiment, 309 consumers were randomly assigned to see positive or negative information about a hospital in two modalities: HCAHPS graphs and a relative's narrative e-mail. Then they indicated their intentions to choose the hospital for elective surgery. Principal Findings. A simple, one-paragraph e-mail and 10 HCAHPS graphs had similar impacts on consumers' hospital choice. When information was inconsistent between the HCAHPS data and e-mail narrative, one modality attenuated the other's effect on hospital choice. Conclusions. The findings illustrate the power of anecdotal narratives, suggesting that policy makers should consider how HCAHPS data can be affected by word-of-mouth communication. Key Words. Patient satisfaction, hospital choice, HCAHPS, word-of-mouth communicationHealth policy advocates argue that supplying consumers with publicly available information about provider quality will induce better, more informed choices. Despite significant investments in collecting, analyzing, and reporting quality data, it remains unclear whether people will use it to choose health care providers. Assessments of quality data utilization by consumers have yielded mixed results. For example, HealthGrades reported that 40 percent of health care consumers considered a hospital's quality rating when choosing among alternative providers (Landro 2004). But other studies indicate that most consumers either remain unaware of publicly available health quality data or fail to fully utilize it

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