Impact of online pre-purchase search on consumer satisfaction

Consumers frequently engage in pre-purchase search to extract up-to-date information for their purchase decisions. Search is an essential part of comparison-shopping and decision-making process as it reduces purchase related uncertainty and increases the likelihood of purchase satisfaction. In this paper, we examine the relation of purchase satisfaction and classic determinants of pre-purchase search, measures of purchase related uncertainty, and the type of the search process. We find that only one classic determinant, involvement, influences satisfaction. Instead, we did not find any evidence of the influence of other classic determinants such as product class knowledge, time availability, attitudes toward shopping, and search effort. Moreover, we found that purchase related uncertainties (evaluation uncertainty, choice uncertainty, and implementation uncertainty) and iterative search process are the strongest determinants of satisfaction.

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