The study has to do another round of data collection to confirm some of the peculiar findings in the first round dataset. It is expected to be done in November, and the paper is planned to be ready for submission by March 2001. This study delves into the information good buying behavior of consumers. Information goods are different form conventional goods in that they carry information within them. We predict that information goods are perceived as complements or substitutes depending on source credibility and content discrepancy.
Source credibility affects perception through the judgment of quality of the contained information.
Sources with high credibility are perceived to have better quality information. Thus, consumers perceive information goods from two highly credible sources as substitutes. Content discrepancy affects perception through the divergence in the information among the goods. When two information goods have widely differing information, consumers perceive them as complements i.e. buying both is considered useful. An experiment is conducted manipulating source credibility and information content discrepancy to study purchase intention.