Quality, value, satisfaction, trust, a

greater involvement with the purchase and less time risk. Being of greater interest, we discuss the
moderating effects of knowledge and involvement in more detail in the following sections.
5.5.2. Moderating Effects of Knowledge and Involvement (H8a, H8b, H11a, and H11b)
As expected, knowledge moderated the link between mental intangibility and difficulty of
evaluation (H8a). This finding is in line with many scholars who agree that consumer knowledge is
accumulated from product-related information search and experience (Anderson et al. 1979; Bettman and
Park 1980). Associated with information search and product/service exposure, the mental dimension of
consumer experience serves to make good/service evaluations less difficult. It is possible for physical
intangibility and generality to not affect the evaluation process since neither increase consumers’
processing efforts nor reduce their objective knowledge to perform the evaluation (Wendler 1983).
Knowledge also moderated the relationships between: physical intangibility and social risk, generality
and time risk, and mental intangibility and social and psychological risk (H8b). While consumers’
objective knowledge may be present, their subjective knowledge (Cox 1967) appears to be affected by the
intangibility of the good/service under consideration. Consequently, this subjective uncertainty results in
greater perceived risk of the purchase decision.
Although we expected involvement to moderate the relationship between intangibility and
difficulty of evaluation, such was not the case (H11a). This result is contrary to other studies where
involvement acted as moderator between physical intangibility and difficulty of evaluation (see
McDougall 1987), and between mental intangibility, generality, and difficulty of evaluation (see
Goutaland 1999). Since purchase involvement encompasses information search and time spent in making
a correct decision, consumers probably spend more time and effort in screening information on the
Internet (Clarke and Belk 1978). As a result, the proposed moderating effects of involvement are much
less influential. Partially supporting H11b, involvement moderated the links between the various
dimensions of intangibility and risk. It is said that the more involved a consumer is with a good/service,
the more perceptive s/he will be regarding attribute differences, product importance, and brand
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