External Search Effort: An Investigation Across Several Product Categories

Utilizing an involvement perspective and Punj and Stewart's (1983) interaction framework of decision making, the relationship between external search effort and a number of motivating antecedent variables is investigated and evaluated across five related consumer electronic products. The findings confirm four of five hypothesized relationships between total search effort and the following variables: purchase involvement (+), attitudes toward shopping (+), time availability (+), and product class knowledge (−). The relationship between ego involvement and total search effort was not significant. The influence of these variables upon a number of subindices of external search, including retailer search, media search, interpersonal search, and neutral sources search, is also investigated and reported.