Personalizing to product category knowledge: Exploring the mediating effect of shopping tools on decision confidence

Abstract

Prior efforts in personalization have focused primarily on modeling individual consumer's preferences so that products for which they have a higher likelihood of purchasing are presented. In this study we explore the potential of an approach to personalization focusing on customizing shopping tools based on a consumer's Product Category Knowledge. The low Product Category Knowledge user may not be able to use the shopping tools as well as the high Product Category Knowledge user, because lower Product Category Knowledge users allocate cognitive power to learning the product attribute space at the expense of using the tool effectively. Alternatively, shopping tools may effectively guide the d..