Investigating the Effect of Pre-Purchase Search and Ongoing Search on Post-Purchase Dissonance

In the era of Internet, the issue of information search has obtained attention since the Internet provides more convenient search channel for consumers to change consumers' searching behaviours. The purpose of this study aims to understand how different types of information search influences consumers' post purchase mental state while their amount of information search are influenced by the consumers' product knowledge. The result shows that consumer product knowledge has positive influence on different types of information search, and has negative influence on post-purchase dissonance. Meanwhile, online pre-purchase search and post-purchase search have negative influence on post-purchase dissonance.