Product fit uncertainty and its effects on vendor choice : an experimental study

Matt, C; Hess, T (2016). Product fit uncertainty and its effects on vendor choice : an experimental study. Electronic markets, 26(1), pp. 83-93. Springer 10.1007/s12525-015-0199-5

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Recommender systems and other Internet-enabled technologies have changed the surrounding conditions of prepurchase evaluations on the Internet. In some cases consumers can now sample entire products prior to a purchase – hereby removing all uncertainty about whether a product fits their taste. While previous research has mainly focused on vendor and product quality uncertainty, it is still not clear how declining product fit uncertainty affects consumers. To close this gap, we conducted a laboratory experiment to analyze the effects on consumers’ vendor selection.We find that full elimination of product fit uncertainty is beneficial for vendors, as it increases both the number of purchases and consumer loyalty. Interestingly, if product fit uncertainty is only partially eliminated, consumers do not necessarily show differential behavior for different levels of remaining product fit uncertainty. This has important implications for online vendors that consider the implementation of additional means to reduce product fit uncertainty.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems > Information Management
03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems

UniBE Contributor:

Matt, Christian

Subjects:

000 Computer science, knowledge & systems
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISSN:

1019-6781

Publisher:

Springer

Projects:

[849] Digitale Wertschöpfung und Bepreisung Official URL

Language:

English

Submitter:

Yves Roulin

Date Deposited:

17 Oct 2017 18:19

Last Modified:

06 Feb 2024 14:59

Publisher DOI:

10.1007/s12525-015-0199-5

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.105537

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/105537

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