Note that all products involve a bundle of search and experience attributes (Alba et al. 1997; Lynch and Ariely 2000).
For the purpose of this research, we define search goods as those for which the attributes most important to assessing product quality are generally discoverable without the consumer (or someone else) interacting with the product; conversely, experience goods are those for which attributes associated with product quality are most discoverable through experience with the product.
In our empirical analyses, to examine whether differences still exist in consumer
behavior for search and experience goods, we use Nelson’s (1970, 1974) original classification.