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Marketing the Unfamiliar: The Role of Context and Item-Specific Information in Electronic Agent Recommendations

Alan D.J. Cooke¹; Harish Sujan²; Mita Sujan²; Barton A. Weitz³

¹ Assistant Professor of Marketing and Beall's Research Fellow, University of Florida · ² Associate Professor of Marketing, Tulane University · ³ Eminent Scholar and Professor of Marketing, University of Florida

Electronic agents have the capacity to help consumers discover new products and generate demand for unfamiliar products. This article explores how consumers respond to recommendations of unfamiliar products made by electronic agents. Two studies using simulated music shopping agents show that (1) additional recommendations of familiar products serve as a context in which unfamiliar recommendations are evaluated; (2) when the presentation of the recommendations makes unfamiliar and familiar products appear similar, evaluative assimilation results; and (3) when additional information about unfamiliar products is given, consumers discriminate them from the familiar products, which produces evaluative contrast. These results establish that information that leads to higher evaluations when context is absent can lead to contrast and lower evaluations in the presence of attractive contextual recommendations.

DOI

10.1509/jmkr.39.4.488.19121

Volume

39 (4)

Pages

488-497

Language

en

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BibTeX

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