| Abstract: | User‐directed technologies such as the Web are becoming more prevalent. To understand the usage of these technologies the characteristics of users need to be studied. The focus here is on one user characteristic: consumer knowledge content. Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses, four scales are developed to measure common declarative, common procedural, specialized declarative, and specialized procedural knowledge content of the Web. In addition, an illustration is provided to show how these scales might be used for segmenting consumers. The procedures used may be of value in a wide range of studies where the focus is on investigating users of user‐directed electronic technologies. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
