THE ROLE OF FORAGING THEORY IN INFORMATION OVERLOAD PARADIGM: CONSUMER PERCEPTION OF ONLINE INFORMATION STRUCTURES AMONG GOODS AND SERVICES

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examines consumers’ online activities according to the categories of goods and services, applying foraging theory, and explore online information structure perceived by consumers, determining the degree of information overload. Consumers are confronted by nearly unlimited amounts of information when they gather information to make purchase decisions in an online environment. Few studies have focused on the behavioral pattern of information acquisition to reduce information overload. The available studies are limited by particular conditions under a normative perspective (e.g., cognitive limitation with item specific information only and overemphasis on the quantity dimension of information structure). An improvement may be a holistic approach that allows freedom of information acquisition, and includes an ecological perspective, which emphasizes an interaction between minds and immediate environments (Todd & Gigerenzer, 2007). In other words, to provide a better explanation of information overload phenomenon, the research includes quantity information as well as quality and environmental information in the information structure. This has been overlooked in an information overload paradigm (for example, the question of whether more or less information is better) (Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, & Todd, 2010). Moreover, Xia and Monroe (2005) argued that the majority of research about information acquisition has overemphasized information searching while overlooking information browsing, although both activities occur concurrently during processes of information acquisition. The foraging theory (Stephen and Kreb, 1986), which originated from behavioral ecology, can help explain a continuum of browsing and searching behavior through utilizing the patch framework (Kim & Hantula, 2016). The patch framework provides a different perspective for information structure in terms of the amount of data as a combination of within-patch (searching) and between-patch (browsing), thereby covering the issue of the browse-search continuum to explain issues of amount for information overload. (e.g., Detlor, Sproule, & Gupta, 2003).
The current study applied foraging theory into the online behavior of information acquisition and explored the information structure that consumers establish and consider in their process of information foraging across categories of goods and services (i.e., durables, nondurables, and services). This theoretical integration would proffer some clues for information structure to reduce information overloads through browsing and searching information online. The investigations consist of ordinary activities and purchase-related activities online, frequently purchased items and consideration to make purchase decisions, strategic information foraging patterns, and perceived decisional difficulty.