Consumer knowledge and its consequences: an international comparison

Abstract

Abstract By far the theories of consumer knowledge are mainly estimated in the western countries. It is important and necessary to assess theory generalizability and model equivalence across different culture contexts. This paper intends to gain a preliminary understanding of the relationship between two consumer knowledge components and four product‐related task performances, with a focus on the influences of two psycho‐linguistic differences in cognition. Based on the results of our empirically multi‐group comparison of Chinese and French wine consumers, we find that consumer knowledge is a multidimensional construct in both cultural contexts. It appears that psycho‐linguistic differences largely affect the consumption task performance. Consequently different consumer knowledge components play different roles in consumption tasks and lead wine consumers to employ dissimilar information processing strategies in various cultural contexts.