This article examines the process by which behavioral frequency judgments are generated in consumer surveys. The results from three experiments indicate that the regularity (periodicity of occurrences) and the similarity (idiosyncrasy of the content of occurrences) of a frequently occurring behavior determine ( a ) the accessibility of the requisite information in memory, and therefore the process by which the judgment is generated, and ( b ) the accuracy of the associated frequency report. Further, the use of heuristics such as rates of occurrence result in more accurate frequency judgments than the use of recall-and-count strategies based on episodic recall.

In this article we examine a phenomenon known as sound symbolism, where the sound of a word conveys meanings. Specifically, brand names are composed of individual sounds called phonemes and we investigate how this phonetic structure of brand names affects a consumer's evaluation of products and their underlying attributes. We demonstrate that consumers use information they gather from phonemes in brand names to infer product attributes and to evaluate brands. We also demonstrate that the manner in which phonetic effects of brand names manifest is automatic in as much as it is uncontrollable, outside awareness and effortless.

We demonstrate the differential effects of framing health hazards as occurring every day versus every year, two reference periods that objectively refer to the present but subjectively seem different. Through three studies, we show that every day framing makes risks appear more proximal and concrete than every year framing, resulting in increased self-risk perceptions, intentions to exercise precautionary behavior, concern and anxiety about the hazard, and effectiveness of risk communication. Across different health domains, we show that, while temporal frames moderate self-positivity biases (study 1), difficulty of preventive behaviors (study 2) and outcome valence (study 3) moderate temporal framing effects.

The ease-of-retrieval hypothesis suggests that people use the ease with which information comes to mind as a heuristic in forming judgments (Schwarz et al. 1991). We examine the automaticity of the use of ease-of-retrieval as an input in judgments. We demonstrate that the ease-of-retrieval is used unintentionally, outside of awareness, and effortlessly, along with other consciously applied inputs, to make related judgments. Once experienced, its impact follows through to judgments, even when it is discredited as a source of information. Results across four studies suggest that an automatic source of information (viz., the ease-of-retrieval) may merely have to be accessible to be used in a judgment. We propose a mere-accessibility framework as a variant of Feldman and Lynch's (1988) accessibility-diagnosticity framework to explain these results.

The HIV virus is now an international killer, but individuals perceive that they are less likely to contract the virus than are others (the self-positivity bias). Three studies investigate the antecedents and consequences of the self-positivity bias in judgments of the risk of contracting AIDS. We show that the perceived similarity of another person to oneself and the ease with which related information can be retrieved from memory (the accessibility of information) moderate self-perceptions of risk in an absolute sense and reduce the self-positivity bias. We then demonstrate that increasing the accessibility of a cause of AIDS, in an advertisement propounding safe sex, increases perceptions of one's own risk of contracting AIDS, reduces the self-positivity bias, leads to more favorable attitudes and intentions toward practicing precautionary behaviors (e.g., using condoms, taking an HIV test), and also leads to deeper processing of AIDS educational material. Theoretical implications regarding the use of the accessibility of information as a cue and the self-positivity bias are discussed, and recommendations for social marketing communications are offered.

One of the greatest challenges in advertising health-related information is overcoming the target audiences' self-positivity bias (i.e., the tendency for people to believe that they are invulnerable to disease). In this article, we show that the self-positivity bias hinders message processing, and we demonstrate that message cues can reduce this bias and engage people in more precautionary thinking and behavior. We identify the process by which risk-behavior cues provided in the message affect people's estimates of their vulnerability (self-risk estimates), depth of message processing, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. We test and find support for our theory in three studies that specify the types of risk behaviors that make the contraction of a disease seem easy versus difficult (study 1), that examine their interactive effects with the number of risk behaviors that are enumerated (study 2), and that delineate the underlying process by which these effects manifest (study 3). We demonstrate that the self-positivity bias acts as an a priori hypothesis on the basis of which people process and test incoming risk-behavior information, as would be predicted by confirmatory hypothesis testing theory. Our findings affect the theoretical understanding of how memory- and message-based factors work in opposing ways and suggest a more comprehensive framework for understanding memory- versus message-based judgments. Our results also have implications for media strategy and public health policy by differentiating between commonly used risk-behavior messages that are beneficial to the communicator's goals (e.g., increase compliance) and those that are detrimental to the communicator's goals (e.g., decrease compliance).

Marketing research surveys often elicit behavioral frequency reports. When estimating the number of times a respondent engages in a behavior, s/he may use information about the behavior stored in memory, information provided by the response context, or both. Based on an accessibility-diagnosticity framework, we theorize that the probability of using context-based information in forming a frequency judgment is inversely proportional to the diagnosticity of the alternate inputs accessible in memory. That is, when memory-based information is accessible and diagnostic, contextual information is not used; when memory-based information is accessible but not diagnostic, the use of contextual information depends on its perceived diagnosticity. Finally, when memory-based information is not accessible, contextual information is used even when its diagnosticity is questionable. The results of three experiments support this model. Theoretical implications and recommendations for questionnaire design are discussed.

Consumers prefer brands positioned around identities they possess. Accordingly, the consumer identity literature emphasizes the importance of a clear fit between brands and target identities, suggesting that identity marketing that explicitly links brands to consumer identity should be most effective. In contrast, five studies demonstrate that explicit identity-marketing messages can backfire. Messages that explicitly connect a particular brand to consumer identity increase the salience of external determinants of behavior, reducing consumers' perceptions of agency in identity expression. Hence, compared to messages that merely reference consumer identity, messages that explicitly define identity expression reduce purchase likelihood, despite more clearly conveying identity relevance. These findings highlight the need to consider consumers' need for agency in addition to their drive for self-definition and expression through consumption, offering a foundation to examine both the risks and the rewards of identity marketing.