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

Christian Matt () and Thomas Hess
Additional contact information
Christian Matt: Institute for Information Systems and New Media
Thomas Hess: Institute for Information Systems and New Media

Electronic Markets, 2016, vol. 26, issue 1, No 8, 83-93

Abstract: Abstract Recommender systems and other Internet-enabled technologies have changed the surrounding conditions of pre-purchase 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.

Keywords: Product fit uncertainty; Product evaluation; Experience goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12525-015-0199-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:elmark:v:26:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s12525-015-0199-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ystems/journal/12525

DOI: 10.1007/s12525-015-0199-5

Access Statistics for this article

Electronic Markets is currently edited by Rainer Alt and Hans-Dieter Zimmermann

More articles in Electronic Markets from Springer, IIM University of St. Gallen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().