Knowing what they know: A managerial perspective on consumer knowledge

What a consumer knows about a product or service is crucial to how it is marketed, and this is particularly true in the case of information-intensive products. However, there are two important sides to consumer knowledge: first, there is what consumers really know, or objective knowledge; second, there is what consumers think they know, or subjective knowledge. Interestingly, relatively little is known about the relationship between these two aspects of consumer knowledge or about the variables that impact this knowledge. Using data from a study of consumers’ knowledge of wine, the relationships between and influencers of objective and subjective knowledge are explored in this installment of Technology & Marketing, and a typology of customer knowledge is developed. This has useful implications for the marketing of wine and other information-rich products.