William R. Forrester

The Effect of Attribute Qualities on Consumer Decision Making: A Causal Model of External Information Search

Abstract Several distinctive characteristics of the way in which information is produced and disseminated suggest that simple marginal benefit/marginal cost models may be inadequate to explain decisions that consumers make about how much and what type of information to search. The concepts of search, experience and credence qualities are employed as a conceptual framework that permits prevailing models of consumer information search to accommodate the unique economic qualities of the market for information. Results suggest that there is empirical support for the presence of search, experience and credence qualities among the attributes of a complex service, that attribute qualities are differentially related to information search, and that search, experience and credence qualities moderate the relationship between search antecedents and external information search.

CHARACTERISTICS OF WORK GROUPS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH SOCIAL AND TASK COHESION IN STUDENT TEAMS

Results of an exploratory study of relationships between work-group characteristics and the social and task cohesion of 18 business students engaged in team class projects. Regression analysis of scores on workload sharing, team spirit, task flexibility, and team cohesiveness for scales of the Work Group Characteristics Inventory indicated sharing of the workload was significantly associated with both task and social cohesion; team spirit with task cohesion but not social cohesion; and task flexibility with social cohesion but not task cohesion.

Emotional and Behavioral Consequences of Self–Blame Following Service Failure

Past research suggests that consumers make attributional judgments following service failures and that these attributions of responsibility elicit a variety of emotions. Yet, in service contexts, little is known about attribution related emotions other than anger, or how attribution related emotions influence behavioral responses to dissatisfaction with service outcomes. In this study, we employed a mental simulation to investigate the effect of attributional judgments on emotional and behavioral responses to a core service failure.