Using a Product/Service Evaluation Frame- An Experiment on the Economic Equivalence of Product versus Service Alternatives for Message Retrieval Systems

Abstract

Product/service alternatives represrnt a newly emerging competitive environment where, as a result of advancements in technology, competition be tween 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.