The effect of attribute importance and prior knowledge on the perceptions of customization and assortment

Abstract

This study focuses on how prior knowledge and the perceived importance of alignable and nonalignable attributes affect ordering through customization and searching from a retail assortment. The authors verify the moderating effect of prior knowledge on the relationship between the perceived importance of alignable and nonalignable attributes, and the perception of customization and retail assortments. Hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling based on survey data from 3,328 running shoes consumers in Japan. The results show that the moderating effect of prior knowledge on the relationship between the perceived importance of an alignable attribute (e.g., shoe lightness) and the intention to customize is positive. These results reveal that product customization would be used more when expert consumers perceived the alignable attribute as important. Moreover, the moder­ating effect of prior knowledge on the relationship between the perceived importance of a nonalignable attribute (e.g., color and appearance design) and the perceived importance of a retail assortment is negative. These results reveal that novice consumers would not necessarily attach importance to retail assortments for searching an optimal product in the case that they do not perceive the importance of nonalignable attributes.