Annisa Icul-An Empirical Examination of the Involvement to Ext Search Relationship in Serv Makr

7/29/2019 Annisa Icul-An Empirical Examination of the Involvement to Ext Search Relationship in Serv Makr

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An empirical examination of theinvolvement to external searchrelationship in servicesmarketingJanet R. McColl-KennedyAssociate Professor, Graduate School of Management, University ofQueensland, Brisbane, Australia

Richard E. Fetter, JrAssociate Professor, College of Business, Butler University,Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Keywords Service industries, Services marketing, Consumer behaviour, Involvement

Abstract The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of involvement onconsumers' external search activities across several service settings. Two of the serviceswere credence services (life insurance and furnace overhaul) and two services were

experiential services (exercise club and Caribbean vacation). Involvement was measuredwith a two-dimensional nine-item scale, the dimensions being importance andinvolvement. External search was assessed using a seven-item two-dimensional scale,

source and effort in search. Self-administered surveys were completed by 331 residents of

a major Midwestern US city. The results indicate that, across all four services,involvement does indeed influence consumers' propensity to search externally. Finally,the implications of the findings for marketing managers are discussed.

Introduction

Academic researchers and management practitioners acknowledge the

importance of consumers' external search activities in the consumer decision

making process (Engel et al., 1978; Howard and Sheth, 1969; Perdue, 1993),

because external search is a primary means of increasing knowledge,

reducing perceptions of risk and uncertainty, and increasing post-purchase

satisfaction. Moreover, the amount of external search in which a person

engages can influence the size of his/her consideration set and whether he/she

remains brand loyal or engages in brand switching (Newman, 1977). Thus,there is a great incentive for marketing managers to understand what causes

consumers to seek external information when faced with a purchase decision.

Among the antecedents of external search which have been studied to date

are product class knowledge (Brucks, 1985), recreational and hedonistic

motives (Bloch et al., 1986), involvement (Houston and Rothschild, 1978),

and various situational factors such as price, time pressure, and store

distribution (Beatty and Smith, 1987). While prior research on the causes and

consequences of consumers' external search activities certainly provides a

substantial knowledge base, almost all of this prior research on external

search has been conducted in product contexts, rather than service contexts.

This is especially noteworthy, given the evidence that consumers generally

view procuring services as more risky than products and that, indeed,consumers tend to search more extensively for services than for products

(Murray, 1991).

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The importance of

consumers' external search

activities

82 JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING, VOL. 15 NO. 2 2001, pp. 82-98, # MCB UNIVERSITY PRESS, 0887-6045

An executive summary for

managers and executive

readers can be found at the

end of this article


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Therefore, the current study was undertaken to address this overlooked

aspect of the marketing literature. Primarily, the objective of this paper is to

add to our limited understanding of what influences consumers to seek

external information when procuring services by empirically investigating

the effects of involvement on consumers' external search activities.

Moreover, for purposes of generalizability, this study tests the effect of

involvement-on-external search across several different types of services.

After a brief review of the literature for both involvement and external

search, the results of an empirical study are reported. Finally, a discussion of

the study's limitations, future research opportunities, and managerial

implications are provided.

Conceptual framework

Involvement

The construct of involvement has received considerable attention by

academic researchers (Engel et al., 1978; Rothschild, 1984; Brisoux and

Cheron, 1990) over the past two decades. During this time various types of

involvement have been described and attempts made at measurement. For

example, Beatty et al. (1988) define ego involvement as ``the importance of

the product to the individual and to the individual's self-concept and ego.''

This is similar to enduring involvement, which has been defined as `àn

ongoing concern for a product class, that is, it is independent of purchase

situations and is motivated by the degree to which the product relates to the

self and/or hedonic pleasure received from the product'' (Richins and Bloch,

1986). Whereas ego involvement and enduring involvement are

conceptualized as independent of a particular purchase occasion, purchase

involvement and situational involvement are defined as those occasions

where one is aroused and attentive because of some specific occasion, such

as a pending purchase (Beatty et al., 1988). Laurent and Kapferer (1985)

define involvement as a four-dimensional construct comprising:

(1) importance;

(2) risk;

(3) pleasure; and

(4) sign.

`Ìmportance'' is the perceived importance (its personal meaning) of the

product/service to the respondent; ``risk'' is the perceived importance of

negative consequences such as loss of face or money; ``pleasure'' is the

hedonic value the ability to provide pleasure and affect, and finally, ``sign''

is the symbolic value associated with the product, such as brand names like

``BMW'' and ``Christian Dior''. Zaichkowsky (1985) defines involvement

as, `à person's perceived relevance of the object based on inherent needs,

values, and interests.'' She asserts that this incorporates the earlier-discussed

aspects of involvement and is generalizable across personal (e.g. interestsand values), physical (e.g. characteristics of the object), and situational (e.g.

temporary matters) differences. Zaichkowsky (1985) developed a 20-item

semantic differential scale to operationalize involvement and following the

recommendations of Churchill (1979) assessed the construct validity of her

20-item scale, the personal involvement inventory (PII). Although the results

of her factor analyses generally suggested her 20-item scale was multi-

dimensional (Brisoux and Cheron, 1990), she concluded the scale should be

treated as unidimensional.

Overlooked aspect of the

marketing literature

The ability to provide

pleasure and affect

JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING, VOL. 15 NO. 2 2001 83


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McQuarrie and Munson (1992) developed a ten-item scale, which they

termed RPII, revised personal involvement inventory based on the original

Zaichkowsky PII. The RPII loaded on two factors and had adequately high

measures of internal consistency (McQuarrie and Munson, 1992). While the

RPII extended Zaichkowsky's (1985) work on the involvement construct, it

(i.e. RPII), too, was limited given that McQuarrie and Munson's (1992) ten-

item RPII scale was validated solely with products, not services.

McColl-Kennedy et al. (1995) in an effort to rectify the limitation,

empirically assessed the construct validity of the RPII across a variety of

services. Employing an empirical procedure recommended by Fornell and

Larcker (1981) using the confirmatory factor analysis model to assess the

RPII's construct validity, McColl-Kennedy et al. (1995) reported that the

RPII is indeed two dimensional, with the factors clearly identifying two

aspects of involvement, importance and interest. Thus, there is evidence that

a refinement of Zaichkowsky's original PII scale is appropriate to assess a

consumer's involvement across both product and service settings.

External search

Information search is an important part of consumer decision making (Moore

and Lehmann, 1980; Newman, 1977). Most theories addressing the role of

search activities in the consumer decision making process assert that search

is a means by which consumers reduce uncertainty and perceived risk (Engel

et al., 1978; Howard and Sheth, 1969). Beales et al. (1981) provide a general

framework of search which categorizes search as either internal or external.

Internal search, according to Beales and his colleagues (1981), entails the act

of retrieving previously acquired information from memory. That is, internal

search does not require any outside source. In contrast, external search

entails the acquisition of information from outside sources, such as print

advertisements, television or radio advertisements, salespeople, or personal

acquaintances. While internal search is, no doubt, an important aspect of

consumer behavior, the current study is concerned with only external search.

External search defined. As earlier noted, external search is generally

defined as the acquisition of information from sources other than one'smemory, such as advertisements, friends, point-of-purchase displays,

magazine articles, etc. McColl-Kennedy and Fetter (1999) summarize the

external search literature as follows:

(1) sources (including such things as

. reseller information e.g. catalogs, consultants;

. third party e.g. Consumer Report;

. interpersonal sources e.g. friends or acquaintances;

. direct inspection of the good by the consumer e.g. comparison,

inference) (Beatty and Smith, 1987; Olshavsky and Wymer, 1995);

(2) search effort (Newman and Lockeman, 1975); and

(3) assessing physical aspects of a consumer good's search (such as price,

size) (Brucks, 1985; Newman and Staelin, 1971).

Prior measures of external search. Several points should first be made about

prior measures of external search. First, all (except Dawes et al., 1991;

Murray, 1991; McColl-Kennedy and Fetter, 1997; McColl-Kennedy and

Fetter, 1999) of the search studies we identified in our literature review

measured search activities for products, not services (Beatty and Smith, 1987;

Revised personal

involvement inventory

Information from sources

other than one's memory

84 JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING, VOL. 15 NO. 2 2001


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Bloch et al., 1986; Brucks, 1985). Second, search was generally measured asprepurchase search activities, not ongoing search (Bloch et al., 1986). Finally,while external search is an often-measured variable in empirical studies, littleeffort has been directed to date at validating an external search scale. Indeed,only a few studies reported both a scale's psychometric properties and factorstructure (Beatty and Smith, 1987; Bloch et al., 1986; Kiel and Layton, 1981;McColl-Kennedy and Fetter, 1997; McColl-Kennedy and Fetter, 1999;Urbany et al., 1989), while quite a number of studies measured search withsingle-item measures (Newman and Lockeman, 1975). McColl-Kennedy and

Fetter (1999) appears to be the first study to comprehensively assess thepsychometric properties of external search for services. They administered

the seven-item scale and extracted a two-factor solution across each of theservices included in their study. Based on inspection of individual items'factor loadings, they identified the underlying common factors of search assource and effort.

Typology of service activities and selection of services

Credence versus experiential services. Recall that the involvement-to-external search link has been attributed to both perceived risk (Engel et al.,1978; Howard and Sheth, 1969) and pleasure/entertainment (Bloch et al.,1986). Moreover, others (Brown et al., 1994; Zeithaml et al., 1985) havesuggested that research in services marketing should encompass multiplesettings and/or industries. Therefore, this study used two ``credenceservices'' (life insurance and furnace overhaul) and two ``experientialservices'' (exercise club and vacation in Caribbean). Employing serviceswhich cross over the credence vs experiential typology should test thegeneralizability of the multiple-item scale developed and tested in the currentstudy. An experiential service is defined as a service which can be evaluatedafter some purchase consumption (Ostrom and Iacobucci, 1995), largely by``experiencing'' the service itself, e.g., a haircut or dinner at a restaurant.Consumers have confidence in their ability to judge the adequacy of anexperiential service encounter. A credence service is defined as a servicewhich is difficult to evaluate even after some trial has occurred (Zeithaml,1981). For example (borrowing from Iacobucci, 1992), many professional

service encounters are considered credence services, because even afterobtaining the service, consumers are uncertain as to its goodness-or-badness(e.g. tax and legal advice). Not surprisingly, therefore, credence services areconsidered more risky than experiential services (Iacobucci, 1992), becauseof consumers' inabilities to evaluate the service occasions.

Services selected for the current study. A pool of already-used services fromprior research was generated based on a review of the literature. The itemswere then categorized as either credence or experiential based on priorclassification from the literature, and review by a panel of experts. Any itemsfor which there was uncertainty or disagreement were discarded. The

remaining pool of services was then screened based on the likelihood thatrespondents would have at least some familiarity with the service, even if

they had not procured/experienced the service. Based on this method ofservice selection, the credence services selected for the current study werelife insurance and furnace overhaul. The experiential services selected for thecurrent study were exercise club and vacation in the Caribbean.

Hypotheses

The purpose of our study was to empirically assess whether the previously-

discussed dimensions of involvement, i.e. importance and interest, influence

one's propensity to search via both source and effort in service encounters.

Credence versus

experiential services

Credence experiential

categorization



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More specifically, we are interested in whether there is a positive

relationship between involvement and external search. While there is

considerable theoretical support (Bloch et al., 1986; Engel et al., 1978;

Howard and Sheth, 1969) based on the view that search is a means to reduce

perceived risk or search as a source of pleasure/enjoyment, empirical

evidence is mixed (Bloch et al., 1986). Indeed, Newman and Staelin (1971)

suggest many purchases, even risky and highly involving decisions, are often

made in a state of ignorance with little or no search on the part of the

consumer. Among the plausible explanations for the equivocal results on the

relationship between involvement and search are:

. search may be costly (Punj and Staelin, 1983); and

. consumers may be able to adequately search internally, i.e. retrieve

information from memory, rather than rely on external sources (Claxton

et al., 1974; Punj and Staelin, 1983), and prior satisfaction/positive

experience (Bennett and Mandell, 1969).

Method

Sample and procedures

A convenience sample of 331 residents from a major midwestern city served

as the sample for the study. A comparison of the demographic characteristics

of the achieved sample was nearly identical to the demographic profile of thecity from which the sample was drawn. About 52 percent of the respondents

were male (48 percent female), and the average age of respondents was

approximately 46 years with a standard deviation of 16.7. Ages of

respondents ranged from 19 to 81 years. Sixty percent of the respondents

indicated they earn between $25,000 and $80,000 per year. The group was

rather well-educated, with 60 percent indicating they had obtained at least

some college education.

A self-administered mail survey was used to obtain the data from 1,500

randomly selected names from the purchased mailing. The self-administered

questionnaire with cover letter explaining the purpose of the study and

assuring respondent anonymity was mailed out. Each participant was askedto respond to a series of questions using several different response formats

(e.g. open-ended, semantic-differential scales, Likert rating scale, etc.). On

completion of the self-administered survey, respondents were instructed to

return completed surveys in the stamped self-addressed envelopes. This

resulted in a 22 percent response rate. Only respondents who had used the

services were included in the study.

Measures

The involvement items used in our study were obtained from Zaichkowsky

(1985), McQuarrie and Munson (1992), and McColl-Kennedy et al. (1995).

McColl-Kennedy and her colleagues (1995) empirically examined the

construct validity of Zaichkowsky's (1985) personal involvement inventory(PII) and McQuarrie and Munson's (1992) revised personal involvement

inventory (RPII) and found a nine-item version of the RPII decomposed into

two aspects of involvement, importance and interest. Importance was

measured with five semantic differential scales:

(1) important/unimportant;

(2) irrelevant/relevant;

(3) means a lot/means nothing;

A comparison of the

demographic

characteristics

Revised personal

involvement inventory



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(4) matters/doesn't matter; and

(5) of concern/of no concern.

Interest, the second aspect of involvement identified by McColl-Kennedy et

al. (1995) was measured with a four-item scale semantic differential scale:

(1) dull/neat;

(2) boring/interesting;

(3) exciting/unexciting; and

(4) appealing/unappealing.

Although a full discussion of the procedures employed by McColl-Kennedy

et al. (1995) to assess the construct validity of their measures of importance

and interest is beyond the scope of this paper, suffice it to say they used an

empirical procedure recommended by Fornell and Larcker (1981) in which

the confirmatory factor analysis model is used to assess multi-item scales'

convergent and discriminant validity.

External search was measured with McColl-Kennedy and Fetter's (1999)

seven-item scale as they were able to provide considerable empirical

evidence as to the scale's construct validity across several services. Source of

search was measured with three items:(1) interested in reading information;

(2) interested in reading Consumer Reports; and

(3) have compared service characteristics.

Search effort was measured with four items:

(1) usually talk with other people;

(2) usually seek advice from other people;

(3) usually take many factors into account; and

(4) usually spend a lot of time.

Analytical procedures

There were two components to the data analysis. First, we examined the

factor structures and internal consistencies of the multi-item scales used in

the current study. In the second phase of the analysis, we investigated the

effect of each aspect of involvement (importance and interest) on each aspect

of external search (source and effort) across both experiential and credence

service encounters.

Results

Factor analysis and psychometric properties of involvement

Table I reports the factor structures, percent-of-variance accounted, inter-

factor correlations, and Cronbach alpha for each of the services employed inthe current study. The results reported in Table I suggest that the nine-item

involvement scale used in the current study does indeed measure both

aspects of involvement, importance and interest, previously discussed in this

text. Generally, items loaded strongly on their intended factors, with cross-

loadings (i.e. the tendency of an item to load on its unintended factor) almost

non-existent. Variance explained by the two-factor solutions was generally

in the 55-65 per cent range. For purposes of clarity and ease of interpretation,

only factor loadings equal to or greater than 0.35 are reported. Each of the

Construct validity

Factor structures and

internal consistencies



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Life insurance Furnace overhaul Exercise club

Item Importance Interest Importance Interest Importance I

Important/unimportant 0.86 0.82 0.89

Irrelevant/relevant 0.57 0.83 0.67

Means a lot/means nothing 0.86 0.62 0.85

Matters/doesn't matter 0.91 0.76 0.77

Of no concern 0.77 0.85 0.80 Dull/neat 0.86 0.74

Boring/interesting 0.85 0.85

Unexciting/exciting 0.65 0.51

Appealing/unappealing 0.73 0.81

Eigenvalue 3.34 2.58 3.25 2.30 3.51

Percent of variance (two-factors) 74 70 84

Inter-factor correlation 0.34 0.22 0.51

Cronbach Alpha 0.87 0.81 0.85 0.73 0.87

Table I. Summary of exploratory factor analyses on nine-item involvement scale

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scales' measure of internal consistency was also good, with Cronbach's

alpha ranging from 0.73 to 0.90, well above Nunnally's (1978)

recommended level of 0.70. The inter-factor correlations, as expected, were

also rather low, ranging from 0.10 to 0.50. Given the low inter-factor

correlations reported in Table I, multicollinearity is likely not to be a matter

to which we need to attend when interpreting regression results.

Factor analysis and psychometric properties of external search

Tables II and III report the factor structures, percent-of-variance accounted,

inter-factor correlations, and Cronbach alpha for each of the services employedin the current study. Table II provides the results for the credence services, life

insurance and furnace overhaul, while Table III provides the results for the

experiential services, exercise club and vacation in the Caribbean. The results

reported in Table II are generally supportive of the notion that search was

measured as a two-factor variable, source and effort. Most of the items had

strong factor loadings on their intended factors, with very small cross-loadings.

Inter-correlations amongst the factors were generally quite small, with

correlations ranging from 0.19 to 0.32. In most cases, the unidimensional

scales satisfied Nunnally's (1978) prescribed minimum of 0.70 for measures of

internal consistency for scales under development.

Regression analysis of involvement-to-searchGiven that these results suggest that the scales used in our study adequately

represent the intended underlying constructs, we proceeded to conduct a series

of multiple regression analyses to assess the structural relationships between

involvement and external search across the services used in our study. The

procedure used for this portion of the analysis involved inspection of:

. the p-value which indicated whether or not the regression model

explained a significant portion of the variance in our dependent variable;

. p-values to assess whether individual parameter estimates were

significantly different from zero;

Life insurance Furnace overhaul

Item Source Effort Source Effort

I would be interested in reading information

about how this service is performed 0.84 0.87

I would be interested in reading a Consumer

Report's article about this service 0.79 0.66

I have compared service characteristics among

firms that provide this service 0.54 0.60

I usually talk about this service with other people 0.63 0.65 0.47

I usually seek advice from other people prior to

purchasing this service 0.48 0.71

I usually take many factors into account before


I usually spend a lot of time choosing what kindto buy 0.80 0.85

Eigenvalue 3.10 1.32 3.27 1.51

Percent of variance (two-factors) 55 60

Inter-factor correlation 0.19 0.21

Cronbach Alpha 0.70 0.71 0.65 0.76

Table II. Exploratory factor analysis of search items for credence service

encounters

Strong factor loadings

Multiple regression

analyses



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. standardized regression coefficients to assess the relative impact of

importance and interest on each dimension of search; and

. the amount of variance explained by the regression model for each of ourdependent variables.

In addition to the aforementioned procedures, we also assessed whether the

regression results were invariant across all four service settings.

The results of the regression analyses are reported in Table IV. Inspection of

Table IV suggests a number of interesting findings. First, it appears thatinvolvement does indeed significantly influence external search across both

experiential and credence services. In fact, six of the eight regression models

Exercise club Caribbean vacation

Item Source Effort Source Effort

I would be interested in reading information

about how this service is performed 0.74 0.82

I would be interested in reading a Consumer

Report's article about this service 0.89 0.87

I have compared service characteristics among

firms that provide this service 0.60 0.66

I usually talk about this service with other

people 0.81 0.79

I usually seek advice from other people prior to


I usually take many factors into account before


I usually spend a lot of time choosing what kind

to buy 0.84 0.72

Eigenvalue 4.22 1.98 3.52 1.20

Percent of variance (two-factors) 77 59

Inter-factor correlation 0.32 0.21

Cronbach Alpha 0.80 0.89 0.75 0.84

Table III. Exploratory factor analysis of search items for experiential service

encounters

Credence services Experiential services

Life

insurance

Furnace

overhaul

Exercise

club

Vacation in

Caribbean

Dependent variable: search source

Intercept 4.27 5.78 5.74 5.66

Independent variable

Importance 0.09 0.34a 0.36a 0.29a

Interest 0.12 0.31a 0.11 0.30a

Adjusted R2 0.03 0.24a 0.16a 0.29a

Dependent variable: search effortIntercept 4.73 5.50 5.99 5.81

Independent variable

Importance 0.24a 0.34a 0.47a 0.08

Interest 0.34a 0.05 0.13 0.30a

Adjusted R2 0.34a 0.08b 0.32a 0.19a

Notes: a significant at 0.01 level; b significant at 0.05 level

Table IV. The effect of involvement on external search



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reported in Table IV had small p-values (i.e. observed p-value less than

0.05), suggesting the regression models were helpful in explaining at least

some of the variance in our dependent measures of external search. However,

further inspection of Table IV suggests quite a number of differences across

the various regression models. For example, the variance explained by the

regression models ranged from 3 percent (source of search for life insurance)

to 34 percent (search effort for life insurance). In the remainder of this

section, each regression model will be briefly discussed. A more general

discussion of the study's findings will then be presented in the discussion

section of the paper.

Search source for life insurance. Neither importance, nor interest had

significant effects on search source for life insurance. The adjusted R-

squared was only 0.03. Thus, the evidence reported in this study suggests

that one's level of involvement is not related to external source of search

when contemplating the purchase of life insurance. That is, whether or not

one considers life insurance important to oneself or the degree to which one

is interested in life insurance does not influence the degree to which one

seeks external sources of information for life insurance.

Search effort for life insurance. Both importance and interest had rather

strong effects on one's tendency to put effort into seeking information about

life insurance. The effect of interest on effort was somewhat stronger thanthe effect of importance on effort (std beta coefficients 0.34 and 0.24respectively). Combining importance and interest explained a hefty 34

percent of the variance in effort with search activities for life insurance.

Thus, the findings reported in this regression model suggest that the more

involved in life insurance a person becomes, the more likely he/she is to put

effort into search.

Search source for furnace overhaul. Inspection of the regression model in

Table IV of the effects of involvement on source indicate that the more

involved a person is, the more likely he/she is to obtain information from

various sources. Indeed, the regression model explained over 30 percent of

the variance in external source of search for furnace overhaul. Moreover,

both aspects of involvement and importance, had quite large effects onsource of search for furnace overhaul (standardized betas weights 0.34 and

0.31, respectively).

Search effort for furnace overhaul. Although the overall regression model

helps predict the dependent variable, the adjusted R-squared value was only

0.08. Thus, while better than no regression model at all, involvement is not

particularly helpful in explaining one's propensity to put effort into external

search for furnace overhaul information. Moreover, only importance had a

significant effect on the dependent variable (std beta 0.34).

Search source for exercise club. The effect of involvement on external

source of search is significant, but only the importance aspect of involvement

affects one's propensity to search for external sources for information whenit comes to exercise clubs. However, the effect of importance on external

sources for information on exercise clubs is quite strong (std beta = 0.36).

Search effort for exercise club. The effects of involvement on search effort

for exercise club information was fairly similar to the effect of involvement

on external sources of search for exercise club information. That is,

importance had quite a strong, positive effect on one's propensity to put

effort into searching for external information (std beta = 0.47), but interest

did not have an effect on effort put into search. Given the large standardized

Contemplating the

purchase of life insurance

Involvement



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coefficient, it was not surprising the adjusted R-squared (32 percent) was

also rather sizeable.

Search source for vacation in Caribbean. Involvement had quite a large

impact on one's tendency to search for external information regarding a

Caribbean vacation. Indeed, both importance and interest had very strong

positive standardized beta coefficients (0.29 and 0.30 respectively), and the

adjusted R-squared (29 percent) further supported the notion that

involvement is strongly related to external sources of search activities in this

context.Search effort for vacation in Caribbean. Only one aspect of involvement,

interest, was related to effort put into obtaining external information

pertaining to a Caribbean vacation. The effect of interest on effort put into

this external search in this context, however, was quite strong. The

standardized beta coefficient for interest was 0.30, and the adjusted R-square

was a moderate 19 percent.

Discussion

Purpose of the study and summary of the findings

The general purpose of this study was to investigate whether involvement

has an effect on external search across various service settings. We examined

the effects of a two-dimensional measure of involvement, importance andinterest, on external search. Search, too, was measured as a two-dimensional

construct, search source and effort. After an investigation of the scales'

psychometric properties and factor structures (generally supportive of the a

priori structure of the scales employed in this study), regression analysis was

used to examine the structural relationships between involvement and search.

Moreover, these structural relationships were tested across a variety of

service encounters. Two of the service encounters, life insurance and furnace

overhaul, are considered credence services. That is, with life insurance and

furnace overhaul, the mere acquisition of the service is not sufficient for

consumers to ascertain the adequacy of the service. The other two services

used in this study, exercise club and Caribbean vacation, are considered

experiential services. That is, one can ascertain how one feels about theexperience by going to an exercise club or on a Caribbean vacation.

Based on the empirical results reported in this study, it appears that

involvement does indeed impact search. However, it should be noted that the

structural relationship between involvement and search appears to be more

complex than suggested by prior research. Much of the theoretical research

on the involvement-to-search linkage has suggested that the two variables

should be positively related (Brisoux and Cheron, 1990). External search has

most prominently been viewed as a means to reduce perceived risk, but many

empirical studies have shown that, at least in product settings, consumers

engage in little-to-no external search. Moreover, Bloch et al. (1986) have

recognized that people may simply engage in external search for personal

enjoyment as a leisure activity. The current study, though, empiricallydemonstrates that consumers are prone to engage in search, both in terms of

search source and effort, especially when they are involved in the purchase

occasion. The current study did provide some initial insights, though, as to

the limits of when consumers are prone and not prone to engage in specific

types of external search activities. For example, when engaged in

experiential services, consumers tended not to be influenced so much by how

interested they were in the service, but by the degree to which they perceived

the service as important. Indeed, this was strongly, positively related to the

Effects on external search

Complex structural

relationship



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degree to which they searched (both in terms of source and effort).

Understanding the effect of involvement on consumers' search for credence

service was somewhat more ambiguous. In the case of life insurance,

involvement had no effect at all on consumers' sources of external search

activities, but involvement was quite important when influencing consumers'propensity to put effort into the search activities for a furnace overhaul.

Contributions and limitations of the study

Although external search has received considerable attention in the product

marketing literature to date, external search has received only scant attentionin services contexts. Clearly, this study provides some initial insight as to

what motivates people to engage in external search activities for services,

both experiential and credence services. Quite simply, in the settings

employed in this study, the more important and interesting a service is

perceived as being the more likely one is to engage in external search, both

in terms of source and effort. Moreover, this study corroborates the findingsreported by Murray (1991) who reported a positive link between perceived

risk and consumers' search activities in services contexts. Given that

consumers are likely to perceive credence services as risky occasions

(Zeithaml, 1981), it appears consumers may actually become more involved

in the situation and seek additional information to deal with potentially risky

situations.Although this study certainly adds to our understanding of the involvement-

to-search relationship in services marketing, the study has a number of

limitations. First, while causal conclusions were drawn about the

involvement-to-external search relationship, it should be noted that we useda cross-sectional descriptive study design in which perceptual data were

obtained from single sources at a single point in time. Thus, there may be

other factors which could account for the empirical relationships which we

observed. Finally, the amount of variance explained across the eight

regression models reported in this study suggest that we should considerother variables. While an adjusted R-squared of 30-35 percent is

encouraging, it suggests that the regression model still leaves 70 percent of

the variance in our dependent variables unexplained.

Research implications

This initial investigation of the effects of involvement on external search in

services marketing provides empirical insight into this important area, butmuch remains to be done. For example, at a minimum, the items discussed in

the limitations section need to be addressed. Moreover, there may be aspects

of search not wholly captured by the seven-item scale used in this study. For

example, Beatty and Smith (1987) suggest that ongoing search and

prepurchase search are conceptually distinct. Since most prior measures of

external search tended to tap only the prepurchase aspect of search,

additional research is needed to further develop a multiple-item measure of

search which explicitly captures both ongoing and prepurchase externalsearch activities. Moreover, the search measure employed in the current

study did not address the specific types of information to which one attends

(e.g. price, availability, guarantee, etc.) while searching for external

information.

While the current study provides insight as to the antecedents of search

across both credence and experiential services, it provides no guidance as tothe consequences of search. Therefore, future research should attend to

important consequences of search, such as size of the consideration set,

Initial insight

Need for additional

research



13/17

satisfaction with the service encounter, and service loyalty. Moreover, there

may be important variables which mediate and/or moderate the causes and

consequences of search, matters which were simply beyond the scope of the

current study.

Finally, given that we have demonstrated that consumers can be induced to

engage in external search suggests that, over time, people may be able to

build a knowledge base of service-related information. Thus, future research

which investigates the causes and consequences of internal search (i.e.

retrieving service-related information from memory, rather than from someexternal source) should prove fruitful in better understanding consumers'

behaviors in service settings.

Managerial implications

The findings reported in this study also have a number of managerial

implications. First, the study suggests that different factors motivate

consumers to engage in external search across service settings. The varying

level of explained variance (adjusted R-squared) and standardized parameter

estimates suggests that managers must be sensitive to the fact that consumers

are variable in what motivates them to search for additional external

information. Also, the fact that managers can encourage consumers to

increase or decrease their level of external search based on perceived levelsof importance and interest suggests that managers must be attentive to the

content of their communications with consumers and how their messages

influence consumers' propensity to search. For example, an out-supplier (a

supplier who is not currently being used by a customer) in the exercise club

business may find it better to promote the importance of exercise in

communicating with potential customers, rather than focusing on the ``fun

aspects'' of the club where they are going if the managers feel the source of

external search is important in vendor selection. Finally, the generally strong

positive results of the effect of importance on both search source and effort,

suggest that managers need not be too concerned about potential service

customers ``shutting down'' in terms of information search. Other empirical

studies in product marketing contexts have indicated that consumers maybecome so overwhelmed with a sense of risk that they simply quit processing

and seeking additional information. Yet this initial study, suggests that a

marketing manager may benefit by emphasizing the importance of his/her

service by motivating consumers to seek additional external information.

However, there are occasions where managers may not want consumers to

actively seek additional information through external search activities (e.g.

when they are the in-supplier, that is the supplier who is currently being used

by the customer). In these instances, they may not want their

communications with current customers to too heavily emphasize the

importance of the service, or it may induce the consumer to actively search

for more information, which may result in the customers comparing the

service with others they have identified through their external search process.

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Understanding consumers'

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settings

Comparing the service



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16/17

Executive summary and implications for managers andexecutives

Customers reduce uncertainty and perceived risk through search

``Search'' is the means by which customers reduce uncertainty and perceived

risk when buying a product or service. Customers generally view buying

services as riskier than buying products. This may help to explain why

customers tend to search more extensively for services than for products.

Internal search involves the customer retrieving previously acquiredinformation from memory. External search entails acquiring information

from such outside sources as advertisements, point-of-purchase displays,

salespeople or personal acquaintances. External searches increase the

customer's knowledge of the product or service, and can also raise the

amount of satisfaction he or she gets after buying the product or service. The

underlying common factors of search are source and effort.

``Involvement'' is affected by the importance, or personal meaning, of the

product or service to the customer, and his or her interest in it.

Experiential and credence services

McColl-Kennedy and Fetter investigate the effect of involvement on

customers' external search activities in four service settings. With two of the

services exercise club and Caribbean holiday customers know how they

feel about the service they receive simply by experiencing it. These are

``experiential'' services. With the other two life insurance and furnace

(central heating boiler) overhaul merely acquiring the service is not

enough for customers to ascertain how adequate it is. These are ``credence''

services, and are generally considered riskier than experiential services.

The survey results

Self-administered surveys were completed by 331 residents of a major mid-

western US city. The results indicate that, across all four services,

involvement influences the likelihood that customer will search externally.

Customers engaged in experiential services tended not to be influenced somuch by how interested they were in the service, but by the degree to which

they perceived the service to be important. This was strongly related to the

degree to which they searched, both in terms of source and effort.

Understanding the effect of involvement on customers' search for credence

service was more ambiguous. In the case of life insurance, involvement had

no effect on consumers' sources of external search activities, but

involvement was quite important when influencing the likelihood that

customers would put effort into the search activities for a furnace overhaul.

The more important and interesting a service is perceived as being, the more

likely the customer is to engage in external search, both in terms of source

and effort. The study also supports the view that there is a positive link

between perceived risk and consumers' search activities in service contexts.Given that customers are likely to perceive credence services as risky, it

appears that consumers may actually become more involved in the situation

and seek additional information to deal with potentially risky situations.

When customers should be encouraged to seek more information

Customers therefore vary in what motivates them to search for additional

external information. Managers can encourage customers to increase or

decrease their level of external search, based on perceived levels of


This summary has been

provided to allow managers

and executives a rapid

appreciation of the content

of this article. Those with a

particular interest in the

topic covered may then read

the article in toto to take

advantage of the more

comprehensive descriptionof the research undertaken

and its results to get the full

benefit of the material

present


17/17

importance and interest. Generally, the study suggests that marketing

managers may succeed in emphasizing the importance of their service by

motivating customers to seek additional information, and that marketing

managers need not be too concerned about potential service customers

becoming so overwhelmed with a sense of risk that they simply quit

processing and seeking additional information.

When customers should be discouraged from seeking more information

However, suppliers may not want their communications with current

customers to emphasize too heavily the importance of the service. This mayinduce the customers to search for more information, and then to compare

the service with others they have identified only through their external

search.

(A precis of the article ``An empirical examination of the involvement to

external search relationship in services marketing''. Supplied by Marketing

Consultants for MCB University Press.)


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