Assuring Me that it is as ‘Good as New’ Just Makes Me Think About How Someone Else Used it. Consumer Reaction Toward Secondhand Goods From an Information Processing Perspective

This exploratory study seeks to understand why consumers react negatively to used goods from an information-processing perspective. This research extends prior work on secondhand goods such as Argo, Dahl and Morales (2006) and suggests that sometimes it matters less what consumers believe about a secondhand product than the degree to which they process information about it having been used / contaminated by another. This study finds that products used for only a brief time by another can elicit a negative reaction in consumers regardless of their prior beliefs about the condition of the secondhand goods. In addition, the results of this study suggest that strategies purported to assure customers about secondhand products may make things worse in some circumstances. These findings have implications for marketers of secondhand goods.