Start Date

10-12-2017 12:00 AM

Description

Attempting to alleviate uncertainties, consumers utilize consistency between advice sources as a key heuristic cue. While previous studies investigated consumers’ strategic utilizations of consistency, these were user-driven, i.e., not system-supported. In addition, the CDITs are costly and complicated for designers as well as consumers. Thus, to shed light on how to design decision support tools to identify consistency across advice sources, this study aims 1) to define and conceptualize consistency distance; and 2) investigate when and how to provide the consistency distance identification tools (CDITs) across information search stages for improving consumers’ decision making performance. We expect that this study can determine 1) if the system-driven CDITs will allow consumers to better manage conflicting opinions by utilizing better consistency strategy, and subsequently, culminate in better product selection decisions, and 2) which combination of a CDIT and information search stage is the most effective in improving decision performance.

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Dec 10th, 12:00 AM

Supporting Online Consumers by Identifying Consistency Distance Among Advice Sources

Attempting to alleviate uncertainties, consumers utilize consistency between advice sources as a key heuristic cue. While previous studies investigated consumers’ strategic utilizations of consistency, these were user-driven, i.e., not system-supported. In addition, the CDITs are costly and complicated for designers as well as consumers. Thus, to shed light on how to design decision support tools to identify consistency across advice sources, this study aims 1) to define and conceptualize consistency distance; and 2) investigate when and how to provide the consistency distance identification tools (CDITs) across information search stages for improving consumers’ decision making performance. We expect that this study can determine 1) if the system-driven CDITs will allow consumers to better manage conflicting opinions by utilizing better consistency strategy, and subsequently, culminate in better product selection decisions, and 2) which combination of a CDIT and information search stage is the most effective in improving decision performance.