• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.57-80
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine the information search behavior of medical consumers visiting a hospital, and investigate the consumption values of medical consumers, classified according to the information search behavior, and characteristics of online health and disease information. This study also tried to identify the factors affecting medical consumers classified according to information search behavior, and gain an extensive understanding of medical consumers'consumption values and online information use. The analysis results of this study are as follows: First, the consumption values of medical consumers were classified into a total of 7 factors, i.e. future-positive value, family-oriented value, sustainablehealth value, rational-progressive value, social-cooperative value, socialachiever value and hedonistic-individual value. Next, the characteristics of medical consumers'online information search behavior were classified into three types of consumer groups, i.e. the limited information-oriented consumer group, the practical information-oriented consumer group and the passionate information-oriented consumer group. Second, the analysis of the differences among the three groups classified according to the characteristics of the information search behavior in terms of consumption values, use of online information sources, utility and the intention to reuse online information showed that all the differences were statistically significant. The passionate information-oriented consumer group showed the highest scores in the sustainable-health value, the social-achiever value and the hedonisticindividual value. Third, the factors affecting medical consumers, classified into three groups according to the characteristics of the information search behavior, were found to be socio-demographic variables like consumers' age and occupation, consumers'consumption values, use of online information sources, and utility of online information. This study tried to understand what values medical consumers have according to the differences in the information search behavior by examining the consumption values of medical consumers according to the information search behavior. The significance of this study lies in the fact that consumption values are instrumental in understanding medical consumers by identifying the fundamental motives and desires of consumers' behavior.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.323-334
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• 2020

This study analyzed the effects of consumers' characteristic variables on information search and purchase decisions in a decision-making process that validated the path model in purchasing apparel products. In constructing a structural equation model using AMOS 19.0., the variables including enjoyment pursuit, price pursuit, product involvement and product risk were selected as consumers' characteristic variables affecting the stage of information search. A questionnaire was distributed to consumers over 20 years old who purchased apparel products using offline and online channels within one year; consequently, we were able to analyze 468 effective data. The results were as follows. First, the path model of this research proved to be the appropriate model explaining the effects of consumers' characteristic variables on the stage of purchase decision-making. Second, enjoyment pursuit had a significant positive influence on offline information search; in addition, price pursuit and product risk affected the online information search significantly. Product involvement affected online information search as well as offline information search. Third, the offline information search affected offline purchase and online information search affected online purchase. However, consumer's channel switching behavior between the stage of information search and the stage of purchase decision was not proven. The findings suggest that companies need to develop distribution strategies according to consumers' characteristic factors that effect consumer's purchase decision-making.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.99-117
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• 2012

This study aimed to measure consumer information competency, which indicates consumers' general ability to search and utilize information. The model of this study was constructed in order to identify how consumer information competency influences the efficiency and the effectiveness of external information search. The model was verified with related prior knowledge as a moderator variable in order to understand holistic consumer information search activity. The result of the study is as follows. First, the concept of consumer information competency was constructed with four sub-abilities: define, search, extract, and synthesis & use. The ability of define was the highest, as opposed to the ability of extract, which was the lowest. Second, consumer information competency was lower for women as well as for low family income. The sub-abilities of search and synthesis & use were lower for aging consumers. Third, consumer information competency has positive effects on information search efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, the efficiency influences the effectiveness positively. Fourth, prior knowledge moderates the effect of consumer information competency to the efficiency. Only for consumers with high knowledge the efficiency has the effect of mediating between consumer information competency and the effectiveness.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.42 no.9
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• pp.195-212
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to analyze consumers' perceived risk and information search behaviors in internet shopping. For this purpose, survey was conducted on 302 consumers in their 20s and 30s who had internet shopping experience. This study found that consumers' perceived risk was significantly related to their gender, educational level, income, credit card use, period of internet un, number of internet shopping experiences, and purchased product. Consumers' search behaviors were also significantly affected by gender, age, educational level, income, period of internet use, and purchased product. In addition, a higher level of consumers' perceived risk was significantly related to the amount of information search on product attributes themselves rather than on general information search such as the number of sites or the number of brands.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.251-263
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• 2018

As mobile shopping has increased in the new media age, fashion consumers' decision making and product consumption processes have changed. The volume of consumer-driven information has expanded since media and social networking sites have enabled consumers to share information they obtain. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors affecting information searching strategies and information sharing about fashion products. An online survey collected data from 466 respondents, relating to the influence of product price level and consumer SNS commitment level on information search and information sharing. Experimental design of three product price level and two consumer SNS commitment level was used. Analysis of the data identified factors in fashion information searching as ongoing searching, prepurchase web portal information search, and prepurchase marketing information search. For low-price fashion products, prepurchase product-detail influenced intention to share information. For mid-priced products, ongoing search significantly affected intention to share information. Both ongoing search and prepurchase marketing information search showed significant effects for high-price products. Consumers who are more committed to SNS engaged in significantly more searching in all aspects of information search factors. Significant interaction effect was detected for consumer SNS commitment level and product price level. When consumers with low consumer SNS commitment search for information on lower-priced fashion products, they are less likely do a prepurchase web portal information search.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.493-513
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• 2014

With the development of related technologies, Location-Based Services (LBS) are growing fast and being used in many ways. Past LBS studies have focused on adoption of LBS because of the fact that LBS users have privacy concerns regarding revealing their location information. Meanwhile, the number of LBS users and revenues from LBS are growing rapidly because users can get some benefits by revealing their location information. Little research has been done on how LBS affects consumers' information search behavior in product purchase. The purpose of this paper is examining the effect of LBS information filtering on buyers' uncertainty and their information search behavior. When consumers purchase a product, they try to reduce uncertainty by searching information. Generally, there are two types of uncertainties - knowledge uncertainty and choice uncertainty. Knowledge uncertainty refers to the lack of information on what kinds of alternatives are available in the market and/or their important attributes. Therefore, consumers having knowledge uncertainty will have difficulties in identifying what alternatives exist in the market to fulfil their needs. Choice uncertainty refers to the lack of information about consumers' own preferences and which alternative will fit in their needs. Therefore, consumers with choice uncertainty have difficulties selecting best product among available alternatives.. According to economics of information theory, consumers narrow the scope of information search when knowledge uncertainty is high. It is because consumers' information search cost is high when their knowledge uncertainty is high. If people do not know available alternatives and their attributes, it takes time and cognitive efforts for them to acquire information about available alternatives. Therefore, they will reduce search breadth. For people with high knowledge uncertainty, the information about products and their attributes is new and of high value for them. Therefore, they will conduct searches more in-depth because they have incentive to acquire more information. When people have high choice uncertainty, people tend to search information about more alternatives. It is because increased search breadth will improve their chances to find better alternative for them. On the other hand, since human's cognitive capacity is limited, the increased search breadth (more alternatives) will reduce the depth of information search for each alternative. Consumers with high choice uncertainty will spend less time and effort for each alternative because considering more alternatives will increase their utility. LBS provides users with the capability to screen alternatives based on the distance from them, which reduces information search costs. Therefore, it is expected that LBS will help users consider more alternatives even when they have high knowledge uncertainty. LBS provides distance information, which helps users choose alternatives appropriate for them. Therefore, users will perceive lower choice uncertainty when they use LBS. In order to test the hypotheses, we selected 80 students and assigned them to one of the two experiment groups. One group was asked to use LBS to search surrounding restaurants and the other group was asked to not use LBS to search nearby restaurants. The experimental tasks and measures items were validated in a pilot experiment. The final measurement items are shown in Appendix A. Each subject was asked to read one of the two scenarios - with or without LBS - and use a smartphone application to pick a restaurant. All behaviors on smartphone were recorded using a recording application. Search breadth was measured by the number of restaurants clicked by each subject. Search depths was measured by two metrics - the average number of sub-level pages each subject visited and the average time spent on each restaurant. The hypotheses were tested using SPSS and PLS. The results show that knowledge uncertainty reduces search breadth (H1a). However, there was no significant correlation between knowledge uncertainty and search depth (H1b). Choice uncertainty significantly reduces search depth (H2b), but no significant relationship was found between choice uncertainty and search breadth (H2a). LBS information filtering significantly reduces the buyers' choice uncertainty (H4) and reduces the negative relationship between knowledge uncertainty and search breadth (H3). This research provides some important implications for service providers. Service providers should use different strategies based on their service properties. For those service providers who are not well-known to consumers (high knowledge uncertainty) should encourage their customers to use LBS. This is because LBS would increase buyers' consideration sets when the knowledge uncertainty is high. Therefore, less known services have chances to be included in consumers' consideration sets with LBS. On the other hand, LBS information filtering decrease choice uncertainty and the near service providers are more likely to be selected than without LBS. Hence, service providers should analyze geographically approximate competitors' strength and try to reduce the gap so that they can have chances to be included in the consideration set.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.45-55
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• 2022

Purpose: Consumers' experience of functional attributes is remembered, and the experience lowers the cost of consumers' input from their point of view and reduces uncertainty. It also plays an important role in consumers' positive emotions and responses. Accordingly, if information search costs are reduced in terms of the costs perceived by consumers about restaurants, a strategy differentiated from other companies can be established. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of functional congruence of restaurant stores on information search cost reduction, positive/negative emotions, and loyalty. Research Design, Data, and Methodology: This study investigated functional congruence, information search cost reduction, and positive/negative emotions. The structural relationship between loyalty was analyzed. To verify this, a research hypothesis was established based on previous studies and a research model was constructed. The questionnaire items were modified and used according to the current study, based on previous studies. The data were collected using the questionnaire method from 187 people who had dining out experience. Frequency analysis was performed to confirm demographic characteristics. Reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the collected data were verified. The research model was analyzed with a structural equation modeling (SmartPLS 4). Results: The findings show that functional congruence had significant positive effects on information search cost reduction and positive emotion, but no significant effect on negative emotion. Information search cost reduction had significant positive effects on positive emotion/negative emotion but did not significantly affect loyalty. Lastly, both positive and negative emotions had significant positive effects on loyalty. Conclusion: Based on transaction cost theory, this study found how functional congruence and information search cost reduction influence consumers' emotions. The functional attributes of restaurants were perceived by customers as information, thus uncertainty was decreased. Finally, appropriate management strategies and implications of functional congruence and information search cost in the restaurant were suggested.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.19-37
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• 2016

Advance of the Internet environment is applied not only to information search but also to the area of consumption behavior. Current research analyzes online use behavior and online information search of consumers in terms of users' perception. With the result of the research, it is noticed that promotion focus brings broader variation of information use behavior, and utilitarian value has a beneficial impact on the online exploratory information search. In addition, it is revealed that the more exploratory the information search is, the wider the range of online shopping information search is. Finally, people who have utilitarian shopping value showed more exploratory behavior in online search, especially for the search of informational products, than those who have hedonic shopping value. Present research is believed to improve practical influence of consumers' personality on online use behavior when customers purchase search products online. As a result, it would contribute to consumer research and marketing held online.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.29-46
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• 1998

This study investigates how the consumers utilize the elements of information search and how consumers are satisfied with them. For this study, drives who have bought their own cars in two years were chosen for subjects of investigation. And samples were interviewed with an organized questionaire from July 8 to July 27, 1996. 300 samples were used for the final analysis. The major results from this study are as follows. 1) In general information search, consumers get a great deal of information from a talk their friends, neighbors, or colleagues, and they obtain information from an experienced person or a professional. In using sources of information search, they made the best use of their experiences, which is the sources of internal information, and for the second, they used advertising and the explanation of a salesman. In using the contents of information search, they made the best use of information about the merits and demerits in each attribute. In using the method of information search, the mixed search 1 method was used the most, and the attribute search method was used. 2) The casual relationship between the general satisfaction for the products and the relative variable was investigated. An age, the time pressure, the information of the products had a direct and indirect influence on the general for the products. The perceived risk, the number of inquiring activity, a shop and the buying method had a direct influence on the general for the products. An indirect influence was showed in the general satisfaction for the products through the medium of inquiring activity, a shop, and buying method.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.67-82
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• 1994

The major purpose of this study was to find the influencing factors in explaining information search patterns and to find if significant differences exist in search outcomes by search patterns. The data for this study were collected in a survey conducted in March of 1993. The final sample consisted of 327 respondents purchased refrigerator 340 purchased bed. The important findings of this study are as follows: First The variables related to search cost-benefit play an important role in identifying search patterns of consumers. Second search outcomes were different among four information search patterns for each of information sources. The overall search outcomes the level of purchase knowledge and of post-purchase satisfaction was relatively high for high-search and high-reliance group compared with other groups. And the results also indicate that although some consumers search less than others they still can make good purchase decision-making and can maximize their utility if they choose useful information sources selectively and use those selected information sources effectively. The findings of this study provide some implications regarding consumer education programs the consumer information providing policies and future research methods.