Presearch Decision Making in Consumer Durable Purchases

The purpose of this research is to (1) examine the relationship between pre-search decision making and external information seeking in consumer durable purchases and (2) to construct consumer profiles corresponding to the different levels of pre-search decision making. The term “pre-search decision making”is used to denote those decisions that consumers make before they actively start searching for (and collecting) information on product alternatives. The latter process is referred to here as “external information seeking.”