Internal and External Search

Internal and External Search

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Consumers first search memory for solutions, criteria and ways to compare.

What it is

Only if memory does not settle it do they look outside. Even extended decisions lean on stored knowledge for alternatives and criteria. On this site it is read alongside Evoked Set, Sources of Information and Search Costs.

In effect

Recalling that Nurofen worked before and buying it with no further search.

What it does not say

It is not the same thing as Evoked Set, which sits close to it on this site but describes a different part of how people decide. It also does not say that the finding reaches every product, buyer or setting; where this page goes beyond the cited research, the step is an inference and is labelled as one.

Sources

  1. Consumer researcher and first author, with Scott M. Smith, of the 1987 Journal of Consumer Research study of external search effort across five consumer electronics products, which related purchase involvement, attitudes toward shopping, time availability and product class knowledge to how much people searched.
  2. Consumer researcher and co-author, with Sharon E. Beatty, of the 1987 Journal of Consumer Research study of external search effort across five consumer electronics products.