THE ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF CONSUMER EXPERTISE

This study assesses a number of different measures of consumer experti se by examining their ability to predict correct choices in three stim ulus-based choice tasks and to support a number of hypotheses derived from the cognitive psychology and consumer behavior literature. The hy potheses concern how consumer expertise should affect the content and organization of knowledge for a product class and reasons for choice a cross different usage contexts. After a factor analysis of the differe nt measures of consumer expertise that yielded three orthogonal factor s, we used regression and TOBIT analyses to examine the effect of each factor on the number of correct choices and the hypothesized differen ces in the content and organization of knowledge and reasons for choic e in the choice tasks. Two of the factors, ''subjective/objective know ledge'' and ''friends owning motorcycles,'' predict the number of corr ect choices in the stimulus-based choice tasks, while the subjective/o bjective-knowledge factor supports almost all of the hypothesized rela tionships for the content and organization of knowledge and reasons fo r choice. The third factor, ''magazines read/motorcycles owned,'' also supports many of the relationships concerning general knowledge.