Determinants of Consumers’ Perceived Knowledge and Need to Evaluate

In this section, the relationship between the personality traits of intuition, predisposition towards maximisation and consumer perceived knowledge and between perfectionism and need to evaluate is conceptualised. The reason for selecting these specific personality traits is because they largely capture the different

decision-making styles consumers employ in their day-to-day activities. As mentioned earlier, product knowledge in this research is limited to consumer perceived knowledge, as research (Alba and Hutchinson 2000) has shown that the actions of consumers are more often based on how they perceive things to be than on how they actually are.

The first trait is intuition, which Hodgkinson, Langan-Fox and Sadler-Smith (2008) define as ‘looking, regarding or knowing from within’. They note that until recently, the ‘theory of intuition’ has received very little scholarly attention, both within as well as beyond the psychological sciences. Consumers often display intuition in a retail environment. Many purchase decisions are made once consumers are in the store, with one study noting that 73% of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale (Rettie and Brewer 2000). Outwardly, this may be attributed to impulse buying behaviour, but a deeper analysis also reveals the important role intuition plays in the consumer decision-making process. Kardes (2006) suggests that when the complexity of the task is believed to be high in terms of the various alternatives available, many attributes to consider and pressure on time, consumers are very likely to simplify choice heuristics. Consumers also rely on intuition to fill the gap at times when evaluation is not possible based solely on the facts available. Research has shown that. Compared to rational decision-making, intuitive processing is much faster in many cases (Dane and Pratt 2007), and also requires less effort (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley and Eyre 2007). This saving of time and effort encourages people to make decisions intuitively rather than employ the rational decision-making process, which they believe may not improve the quality of their decisions. From the studies of Broniarczyk and Alba (1994) it can be concluded that intuition has played

a continuing role in predicting and explaining consumer behaviour. The researchers outline two reasons for this: first, that consumers consider intuition to be the source of product beliefs, and second, that consumers find intuition to be an attractive alternative for investigation and direct product knowledge. To summarise the above, intuition can be said to be a strong belief in something from within, which is easy and quick to process. This in turn results in higher confidence in the decision-making process (Simmons and Nelson 2006). It is thus hypothesised that intuitive consumers have high perceived self-knowledge.

H1: Intuition is positively related to consumers’ perceived knowledge

In sharp contrast to intuition is the construct of perfectionism (Hollender 1965), the second individual trait in this study. While consumers who are intuitive rely on instincts to choose among alternatives, perfectionists have a high learning goal orientation. Research into consumer behaviour has shown perfectionists to have high expectations (Kopalle and Lehmann 2001). Perfectionists meet these high expectations by always wanting to learn more (Schwartz 2004) and by this process of learning, make more informed choices. While intuition gives consumers confidence through their beliefs from within, perfectionists attempt to make choices by evaluating all the options possible. Introducing the trait of the need to evaluate, Jarvis and Petty (1996) note that before arriving at a decision, some individuals are more prone than others to engage in evaluation. Perfectionists have a deep appreciation of the nature of the process required to achieve such a standard and are willing to adapt or learn during the process in order to achieve the expected standard. This research therefore posit that perfectionistic consumers will tend to employ a more rational

process when choosing what to purchase, and will have a higher need to evaluate and to learn. This leads to the following hypotheses:

H2: Perfectionism is positively related to consumers’ need to evaluate

Maximisation (Schwartz, Ward, Monterosso, Lyubomirsky, White and Lehman 2002) is the third individual trait this research conceptualises as being one of the early antecedents of consumers’ need for touch in a retail environment. The term maximisation has been primarily used in economics (Williamson 1966), seeking to explain organisations’, individual’s desire to increase their monetary riches (Squalli 2005). Perfectionism and maximising are two distinct constructs, as was established in the literature review (Schwartz 2004). While maximisers, like perfectionists, seek and expect to meet very high standards, their focus is primarily on the end results or end performance, and they tend to give inadequate attention to the processing of achieving the expected performance. Consumers also for their part, seek to maximise the value for the money they part with while purchasing a product. Observing such a phenomenon, Besanko and Winston (1990) characterise consumers as inter-temporal utility maximisers. Maximisers tend to perceive themselves as highly knowledgeable. They have the passion to want only the very best, which they consider to be a reflection of their level of knowledge. Even if they are satisfied with the current option, they search for other available options, hoping there will be something better than the one they have in hand. It is therefore hypothesised that:

H3: Predisposition towards the trait of maximisation is positively related to consumers’ perceived knowledge