This paper presents INVORMAT, a method developed to enable the construction of consumer information material which meets the information need of the consumer and complements the information supply which already exists in a market. To this end, the information needs of consumers are ascertained on the basis of possible "perceived risks" associated with the purchase of a given product. Supplier-and retailer-controlled information sources are analysed for their capability to reduce these risks, and consumers are questioned about the degree to which they use these information sources. The established information gap serves as a starting-point for the development of consumer information material. The paper describes the method and presents some results obtained by applying it to a number of products.
It is a well established fact that a purchase based on insufficient information not only reduces the amount of utility the consumer gets for his money (Beier, I976; Maynes, i976), but also is a potential threat to the proper functioning of the whole market system (Scherhorn, I975). However, in many cases the information a consumer needs to be able to make a good buy is either hard to get or simply not made available by producers or retailers. Consumer organisations and agencies have tried to fill this gap by producing all kinds of leaflets, brochures, magazines, etc. But while marketing people invest considerable amounts of research in determining what the content of a specific advertisement should be in order to achieve a given aim, the content of material from consumer-oriented sources is usually based only on an intuitive idea of what the information needs of the consumer might be.
This paper describes INVORMAT (Informationsanalyse fiir verbraucherorientiertes Informationsrnaterial), a method developed at Hohenheim University to adapt the content of information material both to the information needs of consumers and to the existing supply of information by producers and retailers. The method was tested with various products, and while the results have to be viewed as preliminary, the report gives an insight into the workings of the method. For the sake of brevity only the results for the product "washing machine" are presented in any detail, but some summary statistics are included for shirts, bedlinen, towels, and car liability insurance.
THE METHOD
The method to be presented consists of two components: an analysis of the information situation in a market for a specific product, and means of transforming