Using a product/service evaluation frame: An experiment on the economic equivalence of product versus service alternatives for message retrieval systems

Product/service alternatives represent a newly emerging competitive environment where, as a result of advancements in technology, competition between products and services capable of yielding the same functional benefits has increased. The purpose of this research effort is to determine whether the evaluation measures of perceived quality, perceived value, and willingness to buy vary when the options under investigation represent the cross-category comparison of a product and a service. in addition, the impact of temporal price frames, defined as economically equivalent means of stating price information, on product/service evaluations is investigated. One hundred twenty subjects were randomly assigned to a 3 x 2 between-subjects factorial design in which two temporal price frames ni td three product/service combinations were evaluated for their impact on product/service evaluations. Results indicate that consumers provide different evaluations for economically equivalent product/service temporal price frames. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.