Knowledge that Transforms

This article extends the idea that priming can influence preferences by making selected attributes focal. Our on-line experiments manipulate the background pictures and colors of a Web page, affecting consumer product choice. We demonstrate that these effects occur for both experts and novices, albeit by different mechanisms. For novices, priming drives differences in external search that, in turn, drive differences in choice. For experts, we observe differences in choice that are not mediated by changes in external search. These findings confirmed that on-line atmospherics in electronic environments could have a significant influence on consumer choice.

Two studies were conducted among professional security analysts to explore their patterns of decision making while managing investment portfolios. In study 1, a computer-based simulation, the analysts' styles differed markedly, with most exhibiting either a momentum or contrarian approach, as indicated by responses to portfolio stock price changes. Study 2 used a verbal protocol procedure and semistructured depth interviews to probe the analysts' thought processes. Momentum and contrarian investors were found to differ on a number of dimensions including price expectations, age, experience, raw performance, risk propensity, cognitive style, knowledge calibration, and strategy adaptivity. Implications and limitations are discussed.

This research examines one aspect of the common but relatively understudied consumer behavior context of group interaction. We argue and demonstrate that the mere anticipation of group discussion can influence people's product attitudes. This occurs because anticipating discussion shifts people's focus toward the criteria dominating what they are mentally rehearsing to discuss. Such a shift is important because people commonly refer primarily to less important information when they explain or prepare to discuss their attitudes. Three studies demonstrate that when people are forming an attitude toward a product while anticipating discussion, this focus on less important information substantially affects people's attitudes toward the product. As a result, depending on the evaluative implications of what is rehearsed, anticipating group discussion can lead to attitudes that are more extreme, more moderate, or similar to those of people not anticipating discussion. Moreover, when the criteria predominantly rehearsed for discussion do not represent how consumers typically evaluate the products, attitudes affected by the group-anticipation context do not correspond to product judgments made outside of the group-anticipation context.

Journal Article A Re-Inquiry on Re-Inquiries: A Postmodern Proposal for a Critical-Reflexive Approach Get access Craig J. Thompson Craig J. Thompson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 29, Issue 1, June 2002, Pages 142–145, https://doi.org/10.1086/339926 Published: 01 June 2002

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Sensory attributes, such as sound quality ascertained by listening to a stereo, are often ambiguous and therefore difficult to encode and retrieve. Despite this, consumers often place more weight on these attributes compared to verbally described market information when making brand choice decisions. Results from two studies demonstrate that providing criteria to evaluate the sound quality of competing brands of stereos facilitates the encoding, retrieval, and alignment of the sensory attribute in a brand choice task. Study 1 shows that without criteria to evaluate sound quality during trial, memory for this attribute is poor. Further, perceptions of sound quality assimilate to conflicting market information, which adversely affects decision performance. The reverse is true when evaluative criteria and a scheme to rate the criteria are provided: memory for sound quality improves, perceptions of sound quality contrast with conflicting market information, more weight is placed on sound quality when decision making, and better choices are made. Study 2 shows that providing evaluative criteria during product trial enhances performance through improvement in the encoding process.

In multidimensional unfolding multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedures, the predicted utility of a brand for a consumer is inversely related to the distance between that consumer's ideal point and the brand position in the derived space. Most MDS models treat all brands the same regardless of their respective market share. In many product categories, however, consumer preferences are heavily influenced by the size of the existing market share (i.e., the brand mass). This article presents two versions of a new spatial methodology that incorporates the effects of brand as well as consumer mass via a spatial gravity model of consumer utility; that is, the attraction of a brand for a consumer depends not only on the distance of the brand from a consumer's ideal point but also on the current market size of the brand, as well as the consumer purchase pattern and volume. One version of the proposed model estimates brand positions and individual ideal points with two-way or three-way pick any/N binary choice data. The second version we develop provides the same spatial decomposition for two-way or three-way metric preference/dominance data. We also develop a series of nested MDS models to estimate, test, and compare four different model structures with respect to any common data set. We illustrate the proposed methodology using an actual commercial application involving physician prescription behavior and examine competing model fits.

Drawing on aspects of logic, classical rhetoric, psycholinguistics, social psychology, and probability theory, this article develops the proposition-probability model (PPM) of argument structure and message acceptance in which verbal arguments are decomposed into arrays of three types of propositions: (a) product claims, (b) data supporting those claims, and (c) conditional rules specifying the relationship between the data and the claims. The propositions making up a given argument can be stated, entailed, presupposed, conversationally implicated, and/or linguistically signaled. Message acceptance is based on the formation and/or modification of beliefs corresponding to the propositions in a given argument. For purposes of making precise predictions regarding the effectiveness of various argument structures, these beliefs are represented in terms of probabilities associated with each proposition. Several postulates are derived from the PPM, and directions for future research on communication and persuasion are discussed.

This article examines the effects of counterfactual thinking on information processing. We conceptualize counterfactual thinking—a process of mentally undoing the outcome of an event by imagining alternate antecedent states—as a problem-solving process that will increase scrutiny of subsequently encountered information. Results from two studies indicate that measures of persuasion are more sensitive to the quality of message arguments when counterfactual thinking precedes message exposure. This research raises the possibility that counterfactual thinking may be an underappreciated cognitive determinant of ad responses. This research also represents a first attempt at striking a relationship between counterfactual thinking and information processing.

We examine the role of level of depression on updating of health-related risk estimates. Participants provided their risk of getting breast cancer before (baseline) and after (follow-up) receiving personalized (experiment 1) or standard (experiment 2) medical risk feedback. Although there were no significant differences in risk estimates at baseline, the follow-up risk estimates indicate that compared to nondepressives, depressives lowered their risk estimates such that they were more accurate or closer to the medical estimates provided in the risk feedback. In contrast to depressives, nondepressives with higher baseline risk estimates did not revise their follow-up risk estimates because they were in a positive mood after receiving the risk feedback.