The increasing use of the Internet as a business transaction channel and information source has attracted attention from researchers and practitioners alike. The model proposed in this chapter is a comprehensive framework to understand what motivates, drives, and mediates online information search behavior. The proposed model may facilitate empirical tests of online search behavior in several ways.
First of all, the proposed model presents boundary conditions for the relationships between antecedents and external information search. For example, prior research suggests that the information-rich and interactive nature of the Internet affects consumer information search (Huang, 2000; Li et al., 1999). It appears that information complexity tends to decrease information search whereas information novelty increases the amount of search. However, this effect will depend on other factors such as consumer ability and motivation to search, or situational factors such as the ones indicated in the proposed model. It is therefore plausible that consumers with prior online purchase experience or high product knowledge will be less affected by information complexity and novelty.
Second, the proposed model may provide theoretical grounds for the interactive role of several important constructs in explaining information search behavior. For example, some researchers found that product knowledge decreases external search (Betty & Smith, 1987) while other researchers demonstrated that higher situational involvement facilitates information search (Celsi & Olson, 1988). The proposed model suggests that situational involvement increases external search only for low product knowledge consumers because high knowledge consumers will utilize their existing knowledge regardless of situational involvement.
Third, the proposed model provides implications for practitioners in terms of how to deliver product and service information on their Web sites in an effective way. Practitioners are reminded of consumer ability, motivation to search, and perceived benefits and costs of search when designing their Web sites. In addition, marketers need to consider consumer characteristics (i.e., knowledge, experience, skill, involvement, shopping attitudes, need for cognition), media and product characteristics simultaneously so that their Web sites can provide information that is properly tailored for the consumer’s abilities and motivations.