Abstract

This paper examines the manner by which online product information is able to change customers' purchase intentions using theoretical and methodological specifications. For theorizing, we adopted the subjectivity/objectivity dichotomy at the epistemological level to propose quality and preferences as product evaluation criteria which determine the customers' purchase intention. In validation, we conducted a marginal analysis to eliminate confounding effects from non-target variables by focusing mainly on the product information level in estimating the purchase intentions. The proposed hypotheses specify the different impacts of product information on the purchase intention in terms of the types of product and information that quality information effectively impacts on quality goods while preference information does not effectively impact on preference goods. A survey of 57 students at a major university in Korea was conducted and the results show that the hypotheses are partially supported through the PLS path comparison method. This study contributes to information systems research, not only by proposing a simple and effective framework for product information perception processing, but also by segregating the information impact from other confounding factors. For managerial implications, we suggest 'right information for the right product' to utilize the high information manipulability and low space constraint on the Web for the firm's effective online product information strategy.

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