주거생활문화공간으로서 아파트의 소비자 지식 구조에 대한 연구: 주관적 지식, 객관적 지식, 자기평가지식

Consumer knowledge plays an important role in the purchase decision making process and the prediction of consumer choice. Previous research studies investigated and proved the critical roles of consumer knowledge. However, several problems exist in the conceptual framework and empirical aspects. As a result, comparison among research findings researches is very difficult.
We define and measure subjective knowledge, objective knowledge, and self-assessed knowledge and consider the relationships among constructs overcoming the problems of previous research studies. In particular, the scope of expertise, the distintion between subjective knowledge and objective knowledge, the underlying structure of knowledge, knowledge structure matching are incorporated to avoid conflicting results. That is, we interpret expertise as the combination of subjective knowledge and confidence in their decision making. Subjective knowledge and objective knowledge are closely related but their roles in the consumer decision making and therefore, it should be investigated separately. Furthermore, underlying knowledge structures should be made in understanding the effects of knowledge and these should be matched for subjective knowledge as well as objective knowledge.
In this study, we split consumer knowledge into subjective knowledge and objective knowledge and construct underlying structures of them. Also, we define expertise as subjective knowledge and self-assessed knowledge. From the perspectives of underlying structure and integration, we investigated the relationship between subjective knowledge and objective knowledge and the impact of these on self-assessed knowledge.
Empirical results using apartment as a product show that there exist some relationships between subjective knowledge and objective knowledge but it is necessary to distinguish these two constructs. These two constructs also affect self-assessed knowledge even after controlling for involvement and experience.