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Uncertainty in consumer decisions

Uncertainty has been identified as a major force shaping behaviour. The ubiquity of uncertainty in everyday choices is reflected in its prevalence in economic theories. Despite the acknowledged importance of uncertainty , however, the actual content of the concept is far from clear, for uncertainty has rarely been the focus of research. Presence of uncertainty has been used as a justification for the relevance of the study, rather than the object of the study in and of itself. In this paper, we have studied the presence of uncertainty in consumer decisions. Uncertainty has clearly a multidimensional nature and its dimensions have various effects on consumer behavior. To identify the central dimensions of uncertainty, we have adopted the idea from Herbert Simon who proposed a generalized approach to model a decision making as a process (Simon 1960). We propose that uncertainty has four dimensions in consumer decision context: knowledge uncertainty, evaluation uncertainty, choice uncertainty, and implementation uncertainty. Those dimensions can be clearly identified from our empirical data by using exploratory factor analysis. The questionnaire used in our empirical study can be used to measure uncertainty on each dimension. Against previous wisdom, evaluation and implementation uncertainties seem to exercise stronger impact on consumer decisions than the other varieties of uncertainty in electronic commerce context. Introduction Consumption involves decision making with what to buy, where to buy, and when to buy being the most obvious choices to be made. Often consumers face these decisions without being fully informed about the many aspects of the purchase. Indecision may exist over the best choice alternative. The needs and wants, the evaluation criteria, are often less than clear or they can't be directly matched with the characteristics of the available choice alternatives. The limits of one's knowledge about the products may be in doubt. In addition, one's ability to see the purchase through, to implement the purchase decision, is often indeterminate. Gaps in one's knowledge lead to feelings of insecurity, a mental state that is often termed uncertainty. Alba and Hutchinson (2000) note that " the correspondence between self-assessed and actual validity of knowledge is an important issue for the study of consumer decision making for high levels of correspondence are achieved rarely and moderate levels that include some degree of systematic bias UNCERTAINTY IN CONSUMER DECISIONS 2 All rights reserved. This study may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the author´s permission. …