This study investigates consumers' importance evaluation and usage of the Internet as an information source, compared with other traditional information sources. The main issue is the extent to which experience products can be transformed so as to be searchable on the Internet. The results of a web-based survey showed that consumers of experience products tended to use more online information than those of search products. Online information sources from other consumers and neutral sources were perceived to be more important and were used more often by the consumers of experience products; whereas retailer/manufacturer websites were perceived to be more useful by consumers of search products. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, market mavenism, and usage of offline information sources were also positively related to the usage of online information.KEY WORDS: experience products; online information search; search products.Unlike traditional information sources, such as TV, newspaper and magazines, the Internet provides consumers with more interactive communications, which is its unique characteristic as a medium (Porter, 2001). The analysis of how consumers use the Internet as a new information source thus becomes an interesting topic for both

The purpose of this study is to investigate how customers' perceptions of service quality, product quality, and price fairness influence their loyalty to a particular service provider. Based on the results of a pilot study, we have elected to study banks, auto repair and maintenance shops, and (gasoline) filling stations, each of which are characterized by differing degrees of intangible service provision. Our results show that customer satisfaction either fully or partially mediates the relationship between consumers' perceptions and their loyalty. The direct or indirect effects on customer loyalty of the perception of product and service quality, as well as of perceived price fairness, are related to the differing levels of intangible service associated with each of the three different service industries.

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This study ascertains the extent to which consumers achieve highest value‐for‐money under different conditions. Perfect Information Frontier Approach is applied to examine the influences of providing consumers with information on their purchase decisions, with allowance for the joint effects of prior product knowledge and product involvement on the provided information. A 2 (provided information: simple vs. complex) × 2 (prior product knowledge: novice vs. expert) × 2 (involvement: high vs. low) factorial design was employed. Data from 282 survey respondents illustrate that experts were more likely to be persuaded by complex product information than by simple information, while novices reacted similarly to both simple and complex information. The effects of providing complex information to involved novices and providing simple information to involved experts showed the least impact.

The authors address the effects of money gain and loss on individually perceived value as predicted by prospect theory in a time gain‐and‐loss context. Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 results support the prospect theory concept of value function. According to Experiment 2 results, the amount of money involved exerted different impacts on individual perceptions—specifically, study participants preferred gaining $1 on one occasion to gaining 50 cents over two occasions and preferred losing $1 one time to losing 50 cents twice. Further, the combined results indicate that the study participants held different perceptions of the value of “short time” versus “little money”—that is, they preferred saving an extra 2 minutes on one occasion to saving 1 minute on two occasions and preferred waiting an extra 1 minute two times to waiting an extra 2 minutes one time. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.