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ABSTRACT
An emerging phenomenon in consumer choice behavior is the use of technology to assist decision making. Such decision aids relax the constraints of human cognitive capacity. In this paper, possible changes in consumer choice behavior in the electronic environment are examined. The impact of such technology on consumer choice confidence is also discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Consumer decision making is an area that has drawn substantial research in the past three decades. The contingent model of consumer decision making has been developed to explain why consumers do not behave as the normative model such as the expected utility model predicted. The basic assumption underlying this contingent model is that decision makers have limited cognitive capacity. However, the development of technology, especially information technology such as Internet, is changing the environment where consumers search for information and make decisions. Since consumer decision making is constructive in nature, the external world, including technologies which human beings created, should be expected to play a powerful role in constructing human behaviors and experiences. Therefore, to understand how consumers make their decisions in the new environment and how to use these technologies to achieve a higher degree of consumer choice satisfaction is a new challenge facing marketers as well as researchers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of consumer decision aids on consumer decision processes (choice strategies) and choice confidence.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Consumer decision processes are constrained by their limited capacity of information processing. They tend to simplify choice tasks and use choice heuristics to make a satisfactory decision instead of trying to optimize their choice. From the behavioral point of view, consumer decision making is contingent (Payne 1982), adaptive (Bettman 1988; Payne, Bettman, et al. 1988) and constructive (Payne, Bettman, et al. 1992). This nature of consumer decision processes influence consumers use of choice strategies and subsequent choice confidence. Figure I shows the framework derived from the literature.
Choice Strategy
Consumers employ different comparison processes when making a choice. These processes are referred to as choice strategies.' Consumers have limited processing abilities which make it difficult for them to process the total amount of information available, therefore choice heuristics are used (Bettman 1979). According to Eihorn and Hogarth (1981), "each strategy can be...