Investigating the effect of pre-purchase search and ongoing search on post-purchase dissonance

Abstract

In the era of Internet, the issue of information search has obtained attention since the Internet provides more convenient search channel for consumers to change consumers` searching behaviours. The purpose of this study aims to understand how different types of information search influences consumers` postpurchase mental state while their amount of information search are influenced by the consumers` product knowledge. The result shows that consumer product knowledge has positive influence on different types of information search, and has negative influence on post-purchase dissonance. Meanwhile, online prepurchase search and post-purchase search have negative influence on post-purchase dissonance.