Information Sources for Different Services
Description
This dataset contains survey data for a sample of customers of nine services: three search services: show bookings, transport bookings and opening a current account; three experience services: hotel or holiday package selection and booking, restaurant selection and booking; and tour selection and booking; and three credence services: insurance, medical attention, and legal assistance. The survey questionnaire contained 20 questions and was designed to take approximately 10 minutes. To account for differences in the nature of the services (names of information sources or purchase channels, etc.) nine separate questionnaires were drawn up. The information requests and measuring scales were the same in all cases. Each respondent was assigned just one questionnaire based on whether he or she had purchased the featured type of service in recent months, and an effort was made to ensure that similar numbers of questionnaires were distributed for each service. For each source mentioned, respondents were asked to rate their intensity of usage and the importance of its influence in their purchase decision (on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is not at all important and 10 is very important). They were also asked about their experience in using the information sources they had used (0 for had never used it before; 10 for I always use it). The following section of the questionnaire dealt with the actual purchase, type of purchase channel, (offline or online) and experience using the channel in question (0-I had never used it before; 10-I always use it). The degree of familiarity with the technology involved was also recorded. Specifically, respondents were asked to rate their degree of ease in finding information or making purchases through the Internet and the social networks (0-Not at all easy; 10-Very easy). They were also asked to rate their degree of involvement in the service purchase process. Using an adaptation of the scale used by Van Trijp, Hoyer and Inman (1996), respondents were asked to indicate on a scale of 0-10 their level of agreement (0-Totally disagree; 10-Totally agree) with two statements: when deciding to purchase ____________ (name of service), “I am always interested in the full details of the purchase” and “It is important for me to handle all the purchase details personally”. The socio-demographic characteristics included in the last section of the questionnaire are: age, sex, household type, number of children, level of education, and size of location of residence.