消費者產品知識、知覺風險對口碑搜尋行為之影響─以台北市靈芝消費者為例

Abstract

近年來，隨著預防醫學與養生觀念的提倡，保健食品產業遂成為炙手可熱的明星產業。由於保健食品對消費者而言乃攸關性較高的商品，使消費者對其存在一定程度之知覺風險，進而在決策過程中企圖尋求可降低其知覺風險的資訊，其中人際之間的口碑傳播不僅常被視為是最重要的資訊來源，且較其他資訊來源具有更強的說服力。同時，消費者的產品知識向來是消費者行為的中心議題，對於消費者的資訊搜尋、資訊處理以及購買決策的制訂，產品知識更是重要的決定因素之一。 故本研究選擇以靈芝作為研究標的，旨在探討消費者所具備保健食品相關產品知識的多寡，是否會影響其所感受到的知覺風險，以及是否會對其口碑搜尋行為產生影響，更進一步檢驗消費者所感知到的知覺風險是否為保健食品產品知識與口碑搜尋行為。 本研究依文獻回顧建立產品知識、知覺風險與口碑搜尋行為之關係架構，調查有效樣本314份，運用結構方程模式(SEM)進行研究結果分析及假設驗證。研究結果顯示，消費者的主觀產品知識與知覺風險及口碑搜尋行為皆呈現顯著負向關係；而消費者的客觀產品知識僅與口碑搜尋行為呈現顯著負向關係。另一方面，消費者所感受到的知覺風險與其口碑搜尋行為呈現顯著正向關係。再者，知覺風險並非作為產品知識與口碑搜尋行為的中介變數。

Recently, improved consumer awareness of personal health and preventive medicine stimulate development in the market for health food. Health food has an inherently high relevance to consumer, resulting in a certain degree of perceived risk. Hence, consumer attempt to seek information can reduce perceived risk during the decision making process. Word-of-mouth becomes an ever important source of information and a more convincing information compare to other sources. Moreover, demonstrated to affect information search, information processing, and decision-making, consumer knowledge remains an important topic to consumer researchers. Thus, this article use Ganoderma lucidum as the research target aims at studying whether the consumer’s product knowledge of health food will affect the perceived risk and word-of-mouth searching behavior. Furthermore, this article also investigates whether perceived risk is termed as a mediator variable between consumer’s product knowledge and word-of-mouth searching behavior. The relationship structure among product knowledge, perceived risk and word-of-mouth searching behavior is built based on reviewed literature, and the effective sample number in the survey is about 314. The study utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the study results and examine the research hypotheses. The study result shows that perceived risk and word-of-mouth searching behavior are significantly negative related to consumers' subjective product knowledge. And there is a significantly negative correlation between consumers’ objective product knowledge and word-of-mouth searching behavior. In the meantime, perceived risk and word-of-mouth searching behavior are significantly positive related. Furthermore, perceived risk is not a mediator variable between consumer’s product knowledge and word-of-mouth searching behavior.