The effects of the amount of information on cognitive responses in online purchasing tasks

This paper examines how consumer’s cognitive responses within a purchasing task are affected by the amount of information found within a website. Three versions of a website were created by manipulating the number of attributes in each condition. The results obtained provide empirical evidence of the “inverted U-shape” relating information processing and the amount of information. The amount of content related responses is the variable responsible for this inverted U-shape form. In situations with both low and high amounts of information, the subjects’ available cognitive resources are dedicated to thoughts other than those specifically associated with the purchasing task. Therefore, both the absence and the excess of information result in a lack of attention towards the stimuli.