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A systematic self-observation study of consumers’ conceptions of practical wisdom ineveryday purchase eventsDavid Glen Mick a,?, Stephen A. Spiller b, Anthony J. Baglioni aa McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia, United Statesb Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, United Statesa r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c tArticle history:Received 1 June 2010Received in revised form 1 September 2010Accepted 1 February 2011Available online 5 March 2011Keywords:IntrospectionConsumer choiceSystematic self-observationPractical wisdomThis project introduces the method of Systematic Self-Observation (SSO) to business researchers, compares itto other modes of introspection, and illustrates its application in a study of consumers’ conceptions of theirpractical wisdom (or lack thereof) during ongoing purchase events. Qualitative data analysis is combined withhierarchical linear modeling analyses. Results are discussed in terms of how this application extends the SSOmethod as well as consumer behavior and wisdom theories. Discussion also addresses opportunities for futureuse of SSO.Published by Elsevier Inc.1. IntroductionIntrospection is the process of looking inward – as an act of selfexamination – to attend consciously to one’s current mental state.Despite evidence of its value in the humanities and social sciences(e.g., Boring, 1953; Hixon and Swann, 1993; Macdonald, 1996),introspection has been used sparingly in marketing and consumerresearch on a formal basis (on an informal basis, many researchersdraw from their own lives and self-insights to formulate hypothesesand explanations). The development of introspection for the benefit ofextending knowledge will depend in part on learning about andappreciating the application of various introspection approaches. Oneof those not seen before in marketing research, and which offerscertain advantages, is Systematic Self-Observation (SSO). In this paperwe describe SSO and compare it to other modes of introspection. Wethen illustrate its application in a study that explores how consumersconceive of what it means to be wise or unwise in their ongoingpurchases. We discuss the results in terms of advancing applicationsof the SSO method (e.g., via hierarchical linear analyses) anddiscovering new insights on consumer choice and wisdom. Discussionfocuses also on opportunities for future use of SSO.2. The nature, design, and conduct of systematic self-observationSystematic Self-Observation developed from a mission to discover,describe, and comprehend the patterns and experiences of ordinarylife (Rodriguez and Ryave, 2002). It is founded upon major theorists insociology and psychology, such as Goffman (1967), Garfinkel (1967),and Jung (1961), who come from the paradigms of symbolicinteractionism, semiotics, conversation analysis, and analytic psychology, among others. SSO involves multiple informants who aretrained by the investigators to notice and record selected aspects oftheir daily experiences. Informants complete a timely field report oftheir observations, including details of actions, communications, andsituational settings. Typically, each informant provides severalwritten narratives on the topic for a given study.Since everyday life is complex, contextualized, and dynamic, thechoice of SSO topic is important so that the best theoretical andsubstantive insights can be realized. SSO is especially appropriate forconcealed or subtle topics such as motives/goals, feelings, andcognitive processes that accompany human activities. Examples inthe past have included telling secrets, withholding compliments, andengaging in social comparisons that generate envy. Rodriguez andRyave (2002) outline six criteria for choosing an apt SSO topic. Itshould be (1) natural to the culture under investigation; (2) singularand specific (rather than a vague topic, such as “moments of socialintimacy,” it should be more focused, such as “admitting to someoneyou are afraid”); (3) noticeable (with training) by informants;(4) intermittent (occurring neither extremely often nor rarely);(5) bounded (has a distinct beginning and end); and (6) of shortJournal of Business Research 65 (2012) 1051–1059? Corresponding author at: University of Virginia, McIntire School of Commerce,Rouss & Robertson Halls, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, United States.Tel.: +1 434 924 3442.E-mail address: [email protected] (D.G. Mick).0148-2963/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier Inc.doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.02.033Contents lists available at ScienceDirectJournal of Business Researchduration (not instantaneous and not lengthy so that the full course ofthe event and experience can be observed and reported).SSO research usually involves a sizeable and varied sample of informants, leading to tens, if not hundreds of reports. Past SSO researchin sociology has regularly relied on college students as informants.Rodriguez and Ryave (2002) endorse that practice by noting that thesestudents are adept at SSO because they are literate, cooperative, andkeen observers. In the pre-study training sessions, informants areguided on how to be mindful to noticing the research topic as it occursin their lives, and they are usually shown instances of prior reports toencourage honesty, accuracy, and detail in generating their ownreports. If feasible, informants are expected to carry a pencil and paperwith them (or a tape recorder or portable computer) to record theirentries immediately, or as soon as possible after the selected phenomenon has occurred.3. Comparison of SSO to other introspection approachesTo highlight the distinctiveness of SSO and how we extend itsusefulness, we compare it first to two other types of introspectiontechniques that could potentially deal with the same issues that weare addressing. First, there is the traditional type of introspectionknown as Self Introspection in which a lone individual intensivelyfocuses on his or her personal psychological processes or content. SelfIntrospection has produced a limited but insightful set of applicationsin marketing research (Gould, 1991; Hirschman, 1992; Holbrook,1995; Levy, 1996; Mick, 1997), drawing attention to consumptionbehaviors that have remained unexplored or insufficiently elaborated,such as hygiene rituals and dependencies on products. Secondly, thereis Interactive Introspection. As the name suggests, this form isdesigned so that the investigator and one or more informants eachengage in private introspections about a selected topic, and then sharetheir insights in subsequent meetings. Ellis (1991) details her findingsfrom applying Interactive Introspection to the lived experience ofemotion complexities, strategies, and control. An important commonality across SSO, Self Introspection, and Interactive Introspectionis that each is invoked by the individual to gain insights about aspecific phenomenon as that phenomenon arises in daily life.Table 1 juxtaposes these three forms of introspection along sixdimensions. As indicated, the disciplinary bases are shared but variedacross the three forms, with SSO combining sociological and psychological foundations. The objective of the three different types ofintrospection is approximately the same, that is, the description ofemerging experiences in day-to-day life. The sample sizes ofresearchers/informants and their respective narrative records increase, respectively, from one person in Self Introspection, who is bothresearcher and informant (producing one or a few narratives), to amodest amount in Interactive Introspection (1–5 pairs of researchersand informants, producing 2–50 joint narratives) and to a largedegree in SSO (10–200+ informants, producing 50–500+ narratives).The form of data that is shared across the techniques is narrativestories, and all can include field notes as well, though it is perhapsmost prominent in SSO. Interactive Introspection also uniquelyinvolves face-to-face interviews between the researcher(s) andinformant(s) after personal introspections, to take preliminaryinsights to new depths via mutual curiosity and empathy. Due to itsmultiple narratives, SSO can more readily involve standard contentanalyses of the introspection records, using categories from priorliterature or generated from an initial reading of a sample of thenarratives. This content analysis can open up opportunities to explorethe extent of, and inter-relationships among, component aspects ofthe narratives.As for data analysis, all three are based on an interpretive/hermeneutic approach that proceeds through repeated readings of thenarratives, with each successive reading refining prior impressions andeach reading relating parts of narratives to wholes, while also drawingcomparisons and contrasts across narratives. Of the three forms, SSOoccasionally uses its larger samples to employ quantitative analysesthrough its content analysis – mostly univariate statistics in the past –pertaining to percentages of thoughts, feelings, interpersonal interactions, social and psychological strategies, and other occurrences. Due tothe nature of the data and analyses in each form, triangulation of insightsincreases from Self Introspection to Interactive Introspection to SSO. Inour study we augment the use of SSO by including a series of openended prompts and structured scales on the data collection instrumentso that informants can provide a wider variety of insights about theirexperiences; in the past, SSO has involved few prompts for recordingexperiences and no numerical scales. We also extend the typicalanalyses of SSO data by triangulating and synthesizing the interpretive–hermeneutic analyses with bi-variate and multivariate analyses throughhierarchical linear modeling. Together these efforts lead to someprovisional theoretical advances on practical wisdom in consumerchoice.In general, the data obtained from SSO allows the researcher to movebeyond singular or small-number introspections that may be quiteintriguing, but potentially non-representative or non-transferable, orthat may be qualified by other factors or conditions that can be codedin the records. An advantage of SSO is the opportunity to developstatistical summaries across multiple relevant introspections andto pursue more sophisticated statistical analyses that build or testtheories for conceptual generalization about the phenomenon underinvestigation.We should also note that there are other valuable forms of introspection besides the three mentioned above, though some are lessamenable to the research we sought to conduct. One, for example, isDescriptive Experience Sampling (Hurlburt and Akhter, 2006) inwhich the informant wears a beeper that is randomly activated by theresearchers. As the beeper is sounded, the informant immediatelywrites down his or her inner experiences, which can include anythoughts, feelings, sensations, tastes, and so on. The randomness ofthis approach has benefits for collecting immediate and less-editedintrospections, but it prevents a focus on a pre-determined topic thatemerges irregularly in daily life, such as making compliments or aproduct choice.Table 1Self Introspection Interactive Introspection Systematic Self-ObservationDisciplinary Origins Philosophy, Theology, Psychology Sociology Sociology, PsychologyObjective Describe emergent experience Describe emergent experience Describe emergent experienceData Personal Narratives Personal narratives, interviews/conversations, joint narrativesPersonal narratives, fieldnotes, contentanalysis categoriesCommon Sample Sizes 1 researcher–informant, 1–5 narratives 1 researcher, 1–10 informants,2–50 joint narratives10–200+informants, 50–500+ narrativesData Analysis Interpretive/hermeneutic Interpretive/hermeneutic Interpretive/hermeneutic, univariate statistics,bivariate and multivariate statisticsaTriangulation Minimal, across narratives only Moderate, across narratives andacross researcher and informantsConsiderable, across narratives and informants,and across qualitative and quantitative dataa The use of bivariate and multivariate statistics for SSO is introduced in the present article, in the form of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM).1052 D.G. Mick et al. / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 1051–10594. Applying SSO to understanding consumers’ perspectives onpractical wisdom4.1. Conceptual overview and project purposeAs Wilson and Schooler (1991) noted several years ago, therecontinues today to be little scholarship on the nature and role ofconscientious forethought in decision making. Accordingly, throughour study using SSO we sought to gather descriptions and understandings of how consumers conceive of, strive for, and occasionallyexperience practical wisdom in their purchase decisions.Wisdom is an ancient and diverse topic (Assmann, 1994). Animportant distinction is drawn between speculative versus practicalwisdom in everyday life. According to Aristotle, practical wisdommeans doing what is right, at the right time, in the right manner, andfor the right purposes (Mick and Schwartz, forthcoming). From anAristotelian base, Fowers (2003, p. 415) defines practical wisdom as“the capacity to recognize the essentials of what we encounter and torespond well and fittingly to those circumstances.” He delineatesseveral key dimensions of practical wisdom. Among them is its strongintentional quality. Fowers (2003, p. 418) writes that “Our reading of acircumstance is largely constituted by our intentions….Against thebackdrop of our ends, we see the details of our situation with greaterclarity and insight, being able to recognize better the salience of bothparticular features as well as the overall import of the present state ofaffairs.”Also, since the most fitting response is not always obvious, practical wisdom often involves deliberation and self-reflection. A significant important goal of deliberation, Fowers explains, is to assessalternatives and our preferred courses of action according to ouroverall aims, while striving to harmonize our varied ends. And it isthrough earnest self-reflection that we evaluate the extent to whichwe are acting for the best reasons. Practical wisdom is akin to Brown’s(2005) notion of “common behavioral” wisdom, which he describes asincluding the management of one’s financial resources. This wouldinclude saving and spending, the use of credit and debt, the role ofprice and quality in purchase decisions, and so forth.The two most notable streams of wisdom research in the socialsciences have been led by Robert Sternberg and the late Paul Baltes.Both have associated wisdom with certain types of knowledge andthe application of knowledge for well-being or the commongood. Baltes and his colleagues have mainly studied wisdom as anexistential expertise that is distinguished from other humanstrengths because it coordinates intellectual, affective, and motivational aspects of human functioning; thus, wisdom is an orchestration of mind and character (Baltes and Staudinger, 2000). ForSternberg, wisdom is a process of balancing the needs and interestsof one’s self, of others’, and of one’s surroundings, spanning bothshort- and long-term horizons (Sternberg, 2003). Hence, thebreadth of factors considered and the time spans contemplated areamong the significant issues in Sternberg’s paradigm of wisdom.Sternberg and others (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1995) have also arguedthat what is considered wise or not is often relative to a givendomain of life. For the purposes of our project, this includes whenand how practical wisdom might be manifested in consumerpurchase events.Up to the present there have been no pointed studies on practicalwisdom in consumer behavior. The beginning stages for fruitfulwisdom research in a given life domain should involve what Sternberg(2003) and Baltes and Smith (2008) call an implicit–theoreticalapproach. It collects and analyzes people’s folk conceptions of wisdomto build insights from the ground up, and to assess the overlap amongthose conceptions and with prior discourses on the subject. Thisapproach dovetails synergistically with Systematic Self-Observation.Thereby, we wedded the implicit–theoretical approach and SSO toprobe consumer practical wisdom.4.2. Method4.2.1. ParticipantsForty-eight undergraduate students at a public university madeSSO records on self-selected consumer behaviors over the course of

asemester in partial fulfillment of requirements in their marketingresearch course. These young adults, aged 18 to 24, are a reasonablesample for this study insofar as they fit the sample profile of manypast SSO studies (as noted earlier) and they are capable of actingwisely (i.e., as Sternberg, 2003, argues, wisdom is not restricted to latelife-stages). In terms of the relevance of purchase wisdom in theirlives, these students have consumer needs, wish lists, and budgetsthat must be monitored and managed, as they occasionally spend onelectronic equipment, clothing, and leisure, among other things. Manyalso carry with them laptop computers, to facilitate the timely entry ofSSO records.All 48 participants completed and submitted four SSO records.Originally we hoped to learn about purchases as well as non-purchaseevents, but the informants focused heavily on buying episodes (e.g., anew dress for a formal event), which may be a natural bias whenpeople are asked to report generally on any aspect of consumerbehavior. Since the number of non-choice events was comparativelysmall and heterogeneous (26 entries), we focused on analyzing thepurchase data (166 entries).4.2.2. ProcedureParticipants attended an introductory meeting for an anonymousstudy on wise and unwise consumer behaviors. They were told thatthey would be tracking and reporting their behaviors, thoughts, andfeelings pertaining to the topic. In concert with the implicit–theoretical approach adopted, participants were given only a short,unadorned definition of wisdom. They were told:Wisdom is most basically defined as “the capacity of judgingrightly in matters relating to life and conduct: soundness ofjudgment in the choice of means and ends” (Oxford EnglishDictionary). Thereby, in our study we are not so much interestedin consumer behaviors that are necessarily or merely successful,smart, or impressive, but rather, we really want mostly to know ofyour consumer behaviors that you believe are wise or unwisefrom your own subjective viewpoint.Each SSO entry was required to focus on a different consumerbehavior event. Following Rodriguez and Ryave (2002), participantswere first trained on the SSO record form, which included showing ahypothetical case and then engaging a free-roaming discussion aboutadditional meanings of wisdom. The researcher emphasized thatthere were no right or wrong perspectives. Immediately following,participants were encouraged further toward accuracy and refinement in their forthcoming SSO entries by completing a shortquestionnaire in which they rated their implementation intentionsand their commitment to the study, and described how they wouldremember to complete the SSO forms in a timely and thoroughmanner (cf. Wood et al., 2002). Once the study began, participantssubmitted the SSO forms electronically to a research assistant whorecorded submissions and then deleted names and any otheridentifying information.4.2.2.1. SSO records and measures. The initial items in the SSO formasked participants to mark the date, their gender, and which of therequired submissions the current one was (1st through 4th). Theparticipants then typed in their description of the event, using asequence of prompts. These were: (a) what is the specific consumerbehavior you are reporting on?; (b) describe the situation or occasionthat led to and surrounded this wise or unwise consumer behavior;D.G. Mick et al. / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 1051–1059 1053(c) where did this consumer behavior occur?; (d) who was involved?;(e) describe what actually happened, including (as relevant) yourgoals, your prior knowledge and experience with this type ofconsumer behavior, the steps you went through, and your specificthoughts, feelings, and behaviors; (f) was there specific dialogueinvolved that can be reported?; and (g) from your viewpoint, whatwas wise or unwise about your role, thoughts, actions, etc. in thisconsumer behavior? This last prompt was intended to ensure that wewere capturing informants’ implicit–theoretical conceptualizations ofpractical wisdom.Next, participants completed several scales. They indicated howfrequently they engaged in the specific consumer behavior (less thanonce per year, 2–6 times per year, 7–12 times per year, more thanonce per month [2–4 times per month], more than once per week, andjust about every day). Next they reported on 11-point semanticdifferential scales (a) how important the specific consumer behaviorwas to them (anchored by Not Important/Extremely Important),(b) how difficult the consumer behavior was for them (anchored byVery Easy/Very Difficult), and (c) how unwise or wise they were in thespecific consumer behavior (anchored by Very Unwise/Very Wise).This latter scale was also part of our implicit–theoretical/SSOapproach insofar as the participants were subjectively indicatinghow wise they thought they had acted in the described episode.4.2.2.2. Data analyses and related propositions. The SSO narratives andtheir assorted details in the 166 entries were reviewed several timesin the spirit of qualitative analysis that followed the path of priorinterpretive–hermeneutical research in consumer behavior (e.g.,Thompson et al., 1989). We searched for storylines with richdescriptions that harbored noteworthy insights about practicalpurchase wisdom, marking recurrent themes and supportive details.In addition, the first two authors created a guide book for contentanalyzing the storylines based either on the wisdom literature or theinitial qualitative analysis of the SSO records. The first two codes werestraightforward: the type of product or service being bought (e.g.,electronics, clothing, food, and automotive) and the purchase channelused (e.g., in-store, Internet, telephone, and catalog). Whether eitheraspect would impact intuitive ratings of purchase wisdom wasuncertain. Prior consumer research and logic suggest that someproduct types (e.g., food) and purchase channels (e.g., in-store) mightinvolve quicker or more visceral choices, leading to a perception ofless practical wisdom (see, e.g., Rook, 1987). Alternatively, sincewisdom is conceived in the literature as a transcendent virtue via areflective process that can be potentially invoked in any given contextof human judgment, practical wisdom may not be systematicallyrelated to any particular product type or purchase channel.The next codes cohered in four different subsets of factors: motivational, processual, situational, and buying outcomes (see AppendixA for details). Motivational factors are the need- or desire-forcesinvolved in the purchase event. In this study these factors were assessedthrough (a) the presence (or absence) of definitive purchase intent(based on Aristotle’s emphasis on the intentional quality of practicalwisdom; Fowers, 2003) and (b) the degree of external informationsearch (which is an indication of deliberation and a commonlyexamined factor in buying behavior that indexes effort to gain pertinentknowledge; Guo, 2001). Based on Aristotle, strong intent and higherlevels of external information search should elevate the sense ofpractical wisdom in consumer purchases.Processual factors are components of human psychology theorizedas central contributors to the evocation of wisdom. In this investigation these factors were measured as the presence (or absence) of:(a) taking a wide perspective (i.e., considering many different issuesin a self-reflective manner as per Fowers, 2003 and Sternberg, 2003);(b) integrating values, goals, and behavior (based on Baltes’paradigm); and (c) considering both short- and long-term goals andconsequences (from Sternberg’s paradigm). It is straightforward topropose that as each of these factors appears as a psychological forcein consumer purchase stories, the consumer’s sense of beingpractically wise should increase.Situational factors are social, environmental, or life-contextelements surrounding the purchase event. In this study these weremarked as the presence (or absence) of: (a) direct buying assistancethrough word-of-mouth (WOM) advice from relatives or friends and(b) time constraints. In general, it would be reasonable to proposethat WOM assistance should increase a sense of purchase wisdom (tobuy or not buy) due to the vividness and credibility of WOM on aninterpersonal basis (see, e.g., Grewal et al., 2003). Alternatively,elevated time constraints should cause stress and offer less opportunity for deliberation (Mick et al., 2004), which in turn should lead tothe consumer perceiving less purchase wisdom.Buying outcomes, as the phrase suggests, covers a wide range offactors, including the socio-psychological and economic consequences of the purchase event. Based on first readings of the SSOstories, the buying outcomes in this study were assessed in terms of(a) whether or not the consumer got carried away and seemed to havebought more than initially intended and (b) whether or not theconsumer spent less than s/he expected to. Overall, we anticipatedthat buying more than intended may decrease a sense of purchasewisdom, perhaps due to guilt or self-reproach (see, e.g., Kottler et al.,2004), and spending less than expected should increase perceivedpractical wisdom because the buyer will feel that s/he was skillful andresponsible for this outcome (cf. Schindler, 1998).The codebook was pre-tested and edited to improve its clarity andaccuracy of application. Then the second author and an independentrater separately read and coded the SSO entries. Overall, the raters’agreed on 84% of their codings, with the range of agreements being70% to 98%. Disagreements were resolved through discussion.The rating scale that informants completed after each narrative toreveal their implicit–theoretical conception of purchase wisdom wasanalyzed quantitatively as a function of the coded SSO data (as describedabove) and the other scaled data using hierarchical linear modeling(HLM, Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002). HLM has had limited use in themarketing and consumer research field, and, to our knowledge, none inSSO studies or wisdom research. HLM is particularly suited to data suchas ours, where the SSO records are nested within participants. That is,the span of 166 individual narratives on purchasing cannot be treated asindependent of each other since groups of three or four came from thesame informant. Moreover, each narrative record and its codings relateto a different consumer behavior episode putatively associated with arelatively wise or unwise buying event. In best capturing the inherentstructure of these data, HLM increases statistical power in the context ofhaving just 48 participants, and it serves to control for extraneousindividual factors. The HLM analyses particularly permit an assessmentof the statistical significance of each independent variable, and aqualitative comparison of their relative magnitudes for explainingvariation in the implicit–theoretical ratings of purchase wisdom.5. ResultsPractical wisdom in purchase activities may not seem like a topicthat people can readily grasp or report on—perhaps too ethereal forSSO. Yet, our informants were often able to convey contemplative andrevelatory insights. For instance, as one informant opined whilerecording a SSO episode, “Sometimes I cannot tell the wiseness orunwiseness of a decision until just after I buy.” Another example ofdiscernment came from nuances in informants’ realizations thatneither being satisfied nor finding good value in a purchased item is asufficient condition for being a wise consumer. Wise purchasesinvolve knowing that the item fulfills intent and appropriateness,including the awareness and control of expectations and desires, andthe infusion of values and goals. Alternatively, unwise purchases often1054 D.G. Mick et al. / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 1051–1059violate such qualities. For example, an informant bought a computer,and had this to say about the separation of wisdom from happiness:Spending $2000 on a brand new one was an unwise consumerbehavior action. I did not meet the original goals I set when Istarted the process of buying a computer. I just had troubleresisting the top of the line technology and I wanted to buy mycomputer on the spot. This made for an expensive computer andone that did not necessarily meet the expectations I set out to buy.I guess I was just very impatient and wanted the best thingavailable. It was especially unwise because this was such a largecomputer purchase and I should have taken more time and effortto get exactly what I wanted. However, ignoring the cost, I stillthink I’m going to be happy with my decision, even though it wasparticularly unwise. I just don’t think it was worth the cost.On the whole, our informants readily reported reflective, intuitive,and ethical dimensions of practical wisdom that supersede conventional criteria for pleasing or shrewd consumer choices and reveal thatpeople are capable of providing penetrating experiential insights onissues that are less concrete than those typically examined in priorSSO applications.5.1. Descriptive statisticsThe frequencies with which the diarists engaged in the sort ofpurchase event they were describing indicated that 44.8% occur lessthan once per year, whereas nearly 25% occur several times per month.Hence, some types of purchase events reported were quite frequent,whereas others were less so. It is worth noting that even though somepurchases represented specific types that were comparatively lessfrequent, if not infrequent (e.g., buying a car, computer, or electronicmusic device), these purchases were not unusual and, taken together,they occur regularly and relatively memorably across daily life.The means and standard deviations (11-point scales) for the ratedimportance, difficulty, and wisdom of the purchase were, respectively,M=7.2 (s.d.=2.61), M=5.1 (s.d.=2.87), and M=6.49 (s.d.=3.48).A variety of product classes were involved in the reported purchases,with the highest being clothing (21.7%), and then food (18.1%),electronics (15.7%), automotive (10.2%), and a miscellaneous category(20.5%, e.g., art, sports equipment, and home accessories).Bivariate HLM analyses revealed that informants’ wisdom ratingswere not related to the sequence of diary records (1st through 4th), thediarist’s gender, how recently the choice occurred, how frequently thereported type of choice occurs, how difficult the choice was, the productclass involved, or the purchase channel used (all F’sb1.1, p’sN.30). Theseinitial results suggest that practical purchase wisdom does notsystematically inhere in the familiarity, difficulty, product type, orpurchase channel being dealt with; rather, as prior wisdom theoristshave implied, practical wisdom is more likely to be about the individualand his or her process in a particular purchase event, i.e., it transcendsmany common and varied aspects of purchase events. Complementingthis interpretation, the wisdom ratings were positively associated withthe importance the person attached to the purchase (F=13.9, pb.001).This latter finding mirrors prior literature showing that higherconsumer involvement – a combination of personal interest andrelevance – tends to stimulate information processing that is morethorough and elaborate (Celsi and Olson, 1988).5.2. Motivational forcesThe role of motivations permeated the SSO episodes on practicalwisdom. For purchases deemed moderately to highly wise, consciousintent and acute deliberation via information search were widelyevident, reinforcing two Aristotelian factors summarized by Fowers(2003). In one relevant case, a male informant bought a $150 MP3player:I wanted one with a little more storage because then it could holdmost of my music and I would not have to change the songs asfrequently. I started out doing some research online about variousbrands and their prices. I discovered that the prices ranged from$100–$250. I was only willing to spend around $150….I startedmy search at Circuit City…then I checked Wal-Mart…My searchcontinued at Target … and I concluded my search at Best Buy,which had a much larger selection….The SanDisk one-gig playerwas on sale for $200 and had a $30 mail-in rebate…It had themost storage for the price and I used a Best Buy gift card thatreduced the price by another $25. This lowered the total to aroundmy price range….I felt it was wise to