Subjective, Objective, and Experience-Based Knowledge: A Comparison in the Decision-Making Context

Abstract

Product knowledge has been recognized as a major factor in information processing and decision-making research. This variable has been operationalized in different ways, and terms such as “product familiarity” or “product experience” have been used to describe essentially the same concept (Bettman and Park, 1980; Johnson an Russo, 1984; Raju and Reilly, 1980). Recently, it has come to be generally accepted that product knowledge can be categorized into three types. These three categories can be termed subjective knowledge, objective knowledge, and experience-based knowledge, respectively.