Chris Janiszewski
Biographic Data
| ID | 99671 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Janiszewski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Janiszewski |
| SIGNATURE | JANISZEWSKI C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Florida |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0498-919X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 415 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 12 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity: Preference Uncertainty Can Be Beneficial When Consumers Have Outcome Uncertainty
Consumers can experience two types of uncertainty when purchasing a product. Preference uncertainty refers to the uncertainty associated with the horizontal product benefits one desires (e.g., “How strong do I want my coffee to be?”). Outcome uncertainty refers to the uncertainty associated with the actual benefits the product will deliver (e.g., “How strong will the coffee be?”). Ideally, retailers should strive for outcome certainty (i.e., stan…
Adding a Safety Date to a Freshness Date Label Reduces Premature Food Disposal
Packaged perishable foods often display one of two date label formats: a freshness date (e.g. “Best before,” “Best if used by”) or a safety date (e.g. “Use by”). Many consumers misinterpret a freshness date as a safety date and infer that the food is unsafe, leading to the premature disposal of edible food. This article offers a viable solution to this form of consumer food waste. We suggest that displaying both freshness and safety dates (i.e. a…
Time is shrinking in the eye of AI: AI agents influence intertemporal choice
Agents help consumers make decisions. While agents have traditionally been human (e.g., sales associate, real estate agent, financial advisor), artificial intelligence (AI) agents are becoming more prevalent. We find that the type of agent, AI versus human, has an influence on intertemporal judgment. Specifically, when an agent is identified as AI, the concept of fast processing becomes more accessible, which makes time delays seem subjectively l…
Concealing Prices: How Delayed Price Disclosure Influences Consumer Purchase Decisions
This article presents the first systematic empirical investigation into a longstanding question in retail: is it better to display prices upfront or reveal them later in the purchase process? Two large-scale field studies demonstrate that delayed price disclosure can either increase or decrease sales. Supporting laboratory studies reveal that one plausible explanation is that a price delay allows price beliefs to shift consumers’ internal referen…
Irreducibility of sensory experiences: Dual representations lead to dual context biases
The anticipated regret of a lost opportunity: When adding a second‐period incentive reduces the appeal of a one‐period promotion
Economic theory assumes that an improvement in the financial benefit of a promotional offer should increase the appeal of the offer (e.g., $25 incentive >$20 incentive). Four studies show that this assumption does not always hold. A two‐period promotion (e.g., $20 off a purchase today plus $5 off a purchase made next month) is valued less than a one‐period promotion (e.g., $20 off a purchase today), with an identical first‐period incentive, when …
Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience
Expertise provides numerous benefits. Experts process information more efficiently, remember information better, and often make better decisions. Consumers pursue expertise in domains they love and chase experiences that make them feel something. Yet, might becoming an expert carry a cost for these very feelings? Across more than 700,000 consumers and 6 million observations, developing expertise in a hedonic domain predicts consumers becoming mor…
Safe Together, Vulnerable Apart: How Interstitial Space in Text Logos Impacts Brand Attitudes in Tight versus Loose Cultures
This research demonstrates that interstitial space in textual brand logos-that is, spacious (vs. compact) arrangement of letters-unfavorably influences brand attitude by reducing product safety perceptions. When potential threats are salient, the effect tends to occur within tight (but not loose) cultures, characterized by sensitivity to threats and a need for rigid social structures. When threats are not salient, the effect appears to occur acro…
Probable Cause: The Influence of Prior Probabilities on Forecasts and Perceptions of Magnitude
Consumers' judgments of the magnitude of benefit that a product provides increase their likelihood of purchasing it, and their judgments of the magnitude of harm that accrues from purchasing a product decrease their likelihood of purchasing it. When assessing the magnitude of a product's potential outcome, consumers often encounter information about its probability of occurring. Ten studies demonstrate that this information biases consumers' prod…
System 1 Is Not Scope Insensitive: A New, Dual-Process Account of Subjective Value
Companies can create value by differentiating their products and services along quantitative attributes. Existing research suggests that consumers' tendency to rely on relatively effortless and affect-based processes reduces their sensitivity to the scope of quantitative attributes and that this explains why increments along quantitative attributes often have diminishing marginal value. The current article sheds new light on how "system 1" proces…
Food as Fuel: Performance Goals Increase the Consumption of High-Calorie Foods at the Expense of Good Nutrition
At work, at school, at the gym club, or even at home, consumers often face challenging situations in which they are motivated to perform their best. This research demonstrates that activating performance goals, whether in cognitive or physical domains, leads to an increase in the consumption of high-calorie foods at the expense of good nutrition. This effect derives from beliefs that the function of food is to provide energy for the body (food as…
Nonconscious Nudges: Encouraging Sustained Goal Pursuit
A person can use a variety of strategies to sustain the pursuit of a conscious goal (e.g., deliberate on the goal, monitor goal progress, increase goal commitment). However, less is known about how to sustain the pursuit of a nonconscious goal, a reality that is reflected in the common finding that nonconscious goal pursuit typically persists for only one choice episode. This research investigates two factors that help sustain the pursuit of a no…
Unexpected-Framing Effect: Impact of Framing a Product Benefit as Unexpected on Product Desire
Product tests are a common feature before any product launch. During product tests, marketers might discover that the product can deliver additional unintended benefits to the users. Should marketers communicate such unexpectedly found benefits to their potential customers as an unexpectedly discovered benefit or as an intended benefit? Across six experiments, including a field experiment, the current research shows that framing a product benefit…
The Pleasure of Assessing and Expressing Our Likes and Dislikes
Although consumer behavior theory has traditionally regarded evaluations as instrumental to consumer choice, in reality consumers often assess and express what they like and dislike even when there is no decision at stake. Why are consumers so eager to express their evaluations when there is no ostensible purpose for doing so? In this research, we advance the thesis that this is because consumers derive an inherent pleasure from assessing and exp…
The Bad Can Be Good: When Benign and Malicious Envy Motivate Goal Pursuit
Benign and malicious envy are a consequence of an unfavorable upward comparison to another individual (i.e., a negative self-other discrepancy). Benign (malicious) envy occurs when people believe the envied individual deserves (does not deserve) his/her advantage. Prior research has shown that benign envy motivates a person to address the self-other discrepancy via self-improvement, whereas malicious envy does not. This research shows that both t…
The Impact of Acquisition Mode on Expected Speed of Product Mastery and Subsequent Consumer Behavior
Consumers can obtain skill-based products through a variety of acquisition modes, such as purchase or rental. Despite the rise of nonpurchase acquisition modes, surprisingly little research has explored the effects of differential acquisition modes on consumer behavior. This research begins to fill this gap in the literature by examining the effect of acquisition mode on the expected time necessary to master newly adopted skill-based products and…
How Do Consumers' Cultural Backgrounds and Values Influence Their Coupon Proneness? A Multimethod Investigation
Although coupons are very effective in increasing sales, a major challenge marketers face with coupons is the low redemption rates. Consequently, marketers are continuously trying to identify consumers who are more or less likely to respond to couponing efforts, in order to better direct coupons to segments high in coupon proneness and hence increase redemption rates. The current research identifies consumers' cultural backgrounds and values as i…
Mind the Gap: How Smaller Numerical Differences Can Increase Product Attractiveness
Consumers often encounter product-related numerical information, such as attribute ratings and version numbers. This research demonstrates that a smaller (compared to a larger) numerical difference can increase perceived improvement and enhance product appeal. We find that when a product’s version number or rating changes from a decimal number to an integer (e.g., 2.4 to 3), product appeal is enhanced compared to when the change is between two in…
The Minimal Deviation Effect: Numbers Just above a Categorical Boundary Enhance Consumer Desire
The present research introduces the minimal deviation effect. We propose that numbers that are slightly above a numerical category boundary (e.g., 1,001 in comparison to 1,000), representing a salient violation of coherent numerical categories, are arousal-inducing, and that the heightened arousal can be misattributed to the incentive value of the focal product, thus increasing consumers’ wanting but not liking. Results from nine experiments prov…
Apples, Oranges, and Erasers: The Effect of Considering Similar versus Dissimilar Alternatives on Purchase Decisions
When deciding whether to buy an item, consumers sometimes think about other ways they could spend their money. Past research has explored how increasing the salience of outside options (i.e., alternatives not immediately available in the choice set) influences purchase decisions, but whether the type of alternative considered systematically affects buying behavior remains an open question. Ten studies find that relative to considering alternative…
Hedonic Escalation: When Food Just Tastes Better and Better
Hedonic escalation is the increased liking of each additional bite of a palatable food. Hedonic escalation is more likely to occur when (1) a palatable food consists of a complex combination of flavors, and (2) a person is motivated to taste additional flavors on each successive bite. Consequently, hedonic escalation is more prevalent when people can identify more flavors (pilot study), attend to additional flavors on each taste trial (study 1), …
A Tutorial in Consumer Research: Knowledge Creation and Knowledge Appreciation in Deductive-Conceptual Consumer Research
A typical article in a top-tier business journal can require as much as $400,000 in academic labor costs (Terwiesch and Ulrich 2014). This estimate raises the question of what makes a contribution worthy of such a significant financial investment. How does an academic community determine the value of a contribution? We propose that two criteria inform judgments of value: the amount of knowledge creation and the amount of knowledge appreciation. I…
Pride and Regulatory Behavior: The Influence of Appraisal Information and Self-Regulatory Goals
Prior research has demonstrated that while people experience pride after an accomplishment, its experience can both encourage and discourage subsequent regulatory behavior. The current research shows that this seemingly contradictory influence can be accounted for by considering the information about the event that generated the pride (i.e., appraisal information) and whether or not a self-regulatory goal is active. In the absence of a self-regul…
The Value of Time
Ten studies are used to document that time is valued in accordance with a double-kinked value function. There is a zone of indifference for small time gains (losses), increasing marginal utility (disutility) for moderate time gains (losses), and diminishing marginal utility (disutility) for large time gains (losses). Moderate amounts of time exhibit increasing marginal utility (disutility) because larger blocks of time provide a more diverse set …
Hedonic Eating Goals and Emotion: When Sadness Decreases the Desire to Indulge
This article uses the functionalist perspective of emotion to demonstrate that the influence of sadness on indulgent consumption depends on the presence of a hedonic eating goal. Sadness heightens a person's sensitivity to the potentially harmful consequences of indulgent consumption, which decreases indulgence when a hedonic eating goal is salient. As sadness is often associated with a loss, this protective function is geared toward preventing f…
Evaluative Conditioning Procedures and the Resilience of Conditioned Brand Attitudes
Changing brand attitudes by pairing a brand with affectively laden stimuli such as celebrity endorsers or pleasant pictures is called evaluative conditioning. We show that this attitude change can occur in two ways, depending on how brands and affective stimuli are presented. Attitude change can result from establishing a memory link between brand and affective stimulus (indirect attitude change) or from direct “affect transfer” from affective st…
Acquiring Resources from Intimates When Obligation Substitutes for Persuasion
The acquisition of needed resources is a necessary part of human activity. Persuasion is a tool that can be used to acquire commodities. However, because of obligations inherent in intimate relationships, the necessity of elaborated persuasive messages is lessened Furthermore, when an intimate's request is rejected, negative responses and counterpersuasion are likely. This article presents the results of a study in which three measures of intimac…
Behavioral Consistency and Inconsistency in the Resolution of Goal Conflict
During the course of a day, consumers experience choices that involve goal conflict (e.g., eat tasty vs. healthy food, recreate vs. work, relax vs. act). In some cases, an initial behavior is followed by a similar behavior. In other cases, an initial behavior is followed by an opposing behavior. We posit that a passive guidance system can nonconsciously guide behavior when there is goal conflict and, hence, determine whether a sequence of behavio…
Effects of Brand Logo Complexity, Repetition, and Spacing on Processing Fluency and Judgment
It is generally accepted that repeated exposure to an advertisement can influence liking for an advertisement and for the brand names and product packages included in the advertisement. Although it has often been assumed that repeated exposure leads to a direct affective response, more recent evidence suggests that prior exposure leads to processing fluency at the time of judgment. It is a misattribution about the source of this processing fluenc…
A Range Theory Account of Price Perception
It is well accepted in the behavioral pricing literature that a consumer's perception of the attractiveness of a market price depends on a comparison of the market price to an internal reference price. The rationale underlying this dynamic has its roots in Adaptation-Level Theory. However, consistent with Range Theory, we postulate that a consumer's assessment of the attractiveness of a market price may also depend on a comparison of the market p…
Overcoming Obstacles to Interpersonal Compliance A Principle of Message Construction
Scholars recognize that language can be used to accomplish goals. If so, messages should be constructed so as to overcome obstacles to the achievement of interpersonal objectives. Based upon this perspective, six hypotheses were deduced that predicted the linguistic features of help-seeking messages from obstacles associated with (a) the type of request (borrowing favors) and (b) relational intimacy. The results of a study that tested these hypot…
Work or Fun? How Task Construal and Completion Influence Regulatory Behavior
Volitional behaviors can be construed as “work” (extrinsically motivated) or as “fun” (intrinsically motivated). When volitional behaviors are construed as an obligation to work, completing the behavior depletes a consumer, and subsequent self-control becomes more difficult. When volitional behaviors are construed as an opportunity to have fun, completing the behavior vitalizes a consumer, and subsequent self-control becomes easier. Six studies s…
Preattentive Mere Exposure Effects
Journal Article Preattentive Mere Exposure Effects Get access Chris Janiszewski Chris Janiszewski Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 20, Issue 3, December 1993, Pages 376–392, https://doi.org/10.1086/209356 Published: 01 December 1993 Article history Received: 01 September 1992 Revision received: 01 March 1993 Published: 01 December 1993
A Goal-Based Model of Product Evaluation and Choice
The authors propose a goal-based model of product evaluation and choice. The model is intended to account for the role of momentary goal activations in relatively straightforward product evaluation and choice processes. It contributes by (a) providing a coherent and consistent account for goal-based product evaluations/choices, (b) providing a theory of the way goal activation influences product evaluation and choice, and (c) generating predictio…
Context-Dependent Effects of Goal Primes
We provide evidence that goal priming effects are context dependent. We show that goal primes encourage prime-consistent behavior when the behavioral context is common and prime-inconsistent behavior when the behavioral context is uncommon. While the prime-consistent behavior is compatible with existing theory, the prime-inconsistent behavior poses a theoretical challenge. We argue that uncommon behavioral contexts encourage the release of a prim…
Two Ways of Learning Brand Associations
Four studies show that consumers have not one but two distinct learning processes that allow them to use brand names and other product features to predict consumption benefits. The first learning process is a relatively unfocused process in which all stimulus elements get cross-referenced for later retrieval. This process is backward looking and consistent with human associative memory (HAM) models. The second learning process requires that a ben…
A Meta-analysis of the Spacing Effect in Verbal Learning: Implications for Research on Advertising Repetition and Consumer Memory
The effects of repeated advertising exposures depend on the size of the interval, or space, between ad exposures. A meta-analysis of 97 verbal learning studies identified several stimulus characteristics and learning context factors that interact with stimulus spacing to facilitate memory for repeated information. The majority of the findings are consistent with the predictions of two enhanced processing explanations of learning—the retrieval hyp…
Preconscious Processing Effects: The Independence of Attitude Formation and Conscious Thought
Two experiments investigate the formation of attitudes toward unattended stimuli. In Experiment 1, a presentation format that encourages processing at a preconscious level demonstrates that attitude formation can occur independently of conscious consideration. Alternative theoretical explanations are offered to account for the purported independence of conscious thought and preference formation, and Experiment 2 is a test of these alternatives. T…
The Desire for Consumption Knowledge
Are consumers motivated to seek out experiences that enhance their appreciation within a product category—and if so, does their level of experiential expertise (or consumption knowledge) within a product category bias the types of experiences they value and pursue? These questions are central to the present research, which explores the premise that consumers value the accrual of consumption knowledge as a means of enhancing their hedonic apprecia…
Probable Cause: The Influence of Prior Probabilities on Forecasts and Perceptions of Magnitude
Consumers' judgments of the magnitude of benefit that a product provides increase their likelihood of purchasing it, and their judgments of the magnitude of harm that accrues from purchasing a product decrease their likelihood of purchasing it. When assessing the magnitude of a product's potential outcome, consumers often encounter information about its probability of occurring. Ten studies demonstrate that this information biases consumers' prod…
The Bad Can Be Good: When Benign and Malicious Envy Motivate Goal Pursuit
Benign and malicious envy are a consequence of an unfavorable upward comparison to another individual (i.e., a negative self-other discrepancy). Benign (malicious) envy occurs when people believe the envied individual deserves (does not deserve) his/her advantage. Prior research has shown that benign envy motivates a person to address the self-other discrepancy via self-improvement, whereas malicious envy does not. This research shows that both t…
The Influence of Macro-Level Motives on Consideration Set Composition in Novel Purchase Situations
Consumers often have to create consideration sets when purchasing goals are not well defined. In these situations, the contents of a consideration set depend on a combination of two motives. First, consumers prefer to create a consideration set of easy-to-compare alternatives. It is easier to compare alternatives that have alignable attributes or alternatives that have overlapping features. Second, consumers prefer to create consideration sets th…
Consumers' Beliefs about Product Benefits: The Effect of Obviously Irrelevant Product Information
When consumers try to assess the performance of a product on a key benefit, their information search often reveals both diagnostic information and irrelevant information. Although one would expect irrelevant information to have little impact on predictions of product performance, we present evidence that the irrelevant information systematically weakens consumers' beliefs that the product will provide the benefit. We show that this dilution effec…
Safe Together, Vulnerable Apart: How Interstitial Space in Text Logos Impacts Brand Attitudes in Tight versus Loose Cultures
This research demonstrates that interstitial space in textual brand logos-that is, spacious (vs. compact) arrangement of letters-unfavorably influences brand attitude by reducing product safety perceptions. When potential threats are salient, the effect tends to occur within tight (but not loose) cultures, characterized by sensitivity to threats and a need for rigid social structures. When threats are not salient, the effect appears to occur acro…
The Influence of Selective Attention and Inattention to Products on Subsequent Choice
A fundamental assumption of choice models is that products are valued for the benefits they provide. The only non-benefit-based source of preference is the processing fluency (e.g., ease of perceiving, encoding, comprehending, or retrieving information) that results from prior exposure to the product. This research documents an additional source of non-benefit-based "preference formation." Repeatedly allocating attention to a product (selective a…
The Influence of Display Characteristics on Visual Exploratory Search Behavior
Visual information search is a combination of two distinct types of behavior. Goal-directed search behavior occurs when consumers use stored search routines to collect information in a deliberate manner. In contrast, exploratory search behavior occurs when consumers are confronted with multiple pieces of information but have little stored knowledge about how to proceed with the information gathering. This article reports on an investigation into …
Hedonic Escalation: When Food Just Tastes Better and Better
Hedonic escalation is the increased liking of each additional bite of a palatable food. Hedonic escalation is more likely to occur when (1) a palatable food consists of a complex combination of flavors, and (2) a person is motivated to taste additional flavors on each successive bite. Consequently, hedonic escalation is more prevalent when people can identify more flavors (pilot study), attend to additional flavors on each taste trial (study 1), …
Pride and Regulatory Behavior: The Influence of Appraisal Information and Self-Regulatory Goals
Prior research has demonstrated that while people experience pride after an accomplishment, its experience can both encourage and discourage subsequent regulatory behavior. The current research shows that this seemingly contradictory influence can be accounted for by considering the information about the event that generated the pride (i.e., appraisal information) and whether or not a self-regulatory goal is active. In the absence of a self-regul…
Hedonic Eating Goals and Emotion: When Sadness Decreases the Desire to Indulge
This article uses the functionalist perspective of emotion to demonstrate that the influence of sadness on indulgent consumption depends on the presence of a hedonic eating goal. Sadness heightens a person's sensitivity to the potentially harmful consequences of indulgent consumption, which decreases indulgence when a hedonic eating goal is salient. As sadness is often associated with a loss, this protective function is geared toward preventing f…
Letting Good Opportunities Pass Us By: Examining the Role of Mind-Set during Goal Pursuit
It is generally accepted that forming an implementation intention promotes goal pursuit and achievement. Forming an implementation intention encourages people to develop a plan, to prepare for events that allow for the execution of the plan, and to efficiently respond to these opportunities. Yet, forming an implementation intention may not be universally beneficial. An implementation intention may encourage the use of means that are part of the p…
Preconscious Processing Effects: The Independence of Attitude Formation and Conscious Thought
Two experiments investigate the formation of attitudes toward unattended stimuli. In Experiment 1, a presentation format that encourages processing at a preconscious level demonstrates that attitude formation can occur independently of conscious consideration. Alternative theoretical explanations are offered to account for the purported independence of conscious thought and preference formation, and Experiment 2 is a test of these alternatives. T…
Acquiring Resources from Intimates When Obligation Substitutes for Persuasion
The acquisition of needed resources is a necessary part of human activity. Persuasion is a tool that can be used to acquire commodities. However, because of obligations inherent in intimate relationships, the necessity of elaborated persuasive messages is lessened Furthermore, when an intimate's request is rejected, negative responses and counterpersuasion are likely. This article presents the results of a study in which three measures of intimac…
Overcoming Obstacles to Interpersonal Compliance A Principle of Message Construction
Scholars recognize that language can be used to accomplish goals. If so, messages should be constructed so as to overcome obstacles to the achievement of interpersonal objectives. Based upon this perspective, six hypotheses were deduced that predicted the linguistic features of help-seeking messages from obstacles associated with (a) the type of request (borrowing favors) and (b) relational intimacy. The results of a study that tested these hypot…
The Influence of Print Advertisement Organization on Affect toward a Brand Name
Three experiments demonstrate that the allocation of subconscious resources during the processing of ads can influence the evaluation of the brand names or logos included in the ads. The evaluation of a brand name is shown to depend on its placement relative to the ad's focal information. Increases in brand name evaluation are attributed to matching activation--the elaborated processing of nonattended material in one hemisphere when the opposing …
Preattentive Mere Exposure Effects
Journal Article Preattentive Mere Exposure Effects Get access Chris Janiszewski Chris Janiszewski Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 20, Issue 3, December 1993, Pages 376–392, https://doi.org/10.1086/209356 Published: 01 December 1993 Article history Received: 01 September 1992 Revision received: 01 March 1993 Published: 01 December 1993
The Influence of Classical Conditioning Procedures on Subsequent Attention to the Conditioned Brand
Three experiments are used to investigate the influence of conditioning procedures on attention to a conditioned stimulus. In experiment 1, scenes presented in a sequence that is consistent with prescribed conditioning procedures are shown to encourage attention to the advertised brands in subsequent product displays. Experiment 2 suggests that differential attention to conditioned brands can be attributed to the signaling properties the brand ac…
Interactive Home Shopping: Consumer, Retailer, and Manufacturer Incentives to Participate in Electronic Marketplaces
The authors examine the implications of electronic shopping for consumers, retailers, and manufacturers. They assume that near-term technological developments will offer consumers unparalleled opportunities to locate and compare product offerings. They examine these advantages as a function of typical consumer goals and the types of products and services being sought and offer conclusions regarding consumer incentives and disincentives to purchas…
The Influence of Display Characteristics on Visual Exploratory Search Behavior
Visual information search is a combination of two distinct types of behavior. Goal-directed search behavior occurs when consumers use stored search routines to collect information in a deliberate manner. In contrast, exploratory search behavior occurs when consumers are confronted with multiple pieces of information but have little stored knowledge about how to proceed with the information gathering. This article reports on an investigation into …
A Range Theory Account of Price Perception
It is well accepted in the behavioral pricing literature that a consumer's perception of the attractiveness of a market price depends on a comparison of the market price to an internal reference price. The rationale underlying this dynamic has its roots in Adaptation-Level Theory. However, consistent with Range Theory, we postulate that a consumer's assessment of the attractiveness of a market price may also depend on a comparison of the market p…
Two Ways of Learning Brand Associations
Four studies show that consumers have not one but two distinct learning processes that allow them to use brand names and other product features to predict consumption benefits. The first learning process is a relatively unfocused process in which all stimulus elements get cross-referenced for later retrieval. This process is backward looking and consistent with human associative memory (HAM) models. The second learning process requires that a ben…
Effects of Brand Logo Complexity, Repetition, and Spacing on Processing Fluency and Judgment
It is generally accepted that repeated exposure to an advertisement can influence liking for an advertisement and for the brand names and product packages included in the advertisement. Although it has often been assumed that repeated exposure leads to a direct affective response, more recent evidence suggests that prior exposure leads to processing fluency at the time of judgment. It is a misattribution about the source of this processing fluenc…
Consumers' Beliefs about Product Benefits: The Effect of Obviously Irrelevant Product Information
When consumers try to assess the performance of a product on a key benefit, their information search often reveals both diagnostic information and irrelevant information. Although one would expect irrelevant information to have little impact on predictions of product performance, we present evidence that the irrelevant information systematically weakens consumers' beliefs that the product will provide the benefit. We show that this dilution effec…
Different Scales for Different Frames: The Role of Subjective Scales and Experience in Explaining Attribute-Framing Effects
Consumers respond more favorably to positively framed attribute information than to negatively framed attribute information, a finding that has been attributed to the affective associations evoked by each frame. We contend that framing effects also depend on the range and level of reference values used to evaluate attribute information. When the range of reference values is narrower for a positive frame than a negative frame, attribute values abo…
The Influence of Macro-Level Motives on Consideration Set Composition in Novel Purchase Situations
Consumers often have to create consideration sets when purchasing goals are not well defined. In these situations, the contents of a consideration set depend on a combination of two motives. First, consumers prefer to create a consideration set of easy-to-compare alternatives. It is easier to compare alternatives that have alignable attributes or alternatives that have overlapping features. Second, consumers prefer to create consideration sets th…
A Meta-analysis of the Spacing Effect in Verbal Learning: Implications for Research on Advertising Repetition and Consumer Memory
The effects of repeated advertising exposures depend on the size of the interval, or space, between ad exposures. A meta-analysis of 97 verbal learning studies identified several stimulus characteristics and learning context factors that interact with stimulus spacing to facilitate memory for repeated information. The majority of the findings are consistent with the predictions of two enhanced processing explanations of learning—the retrieval hyp…
When Are Broader Brands Stronger Brands? An Accessibility Perspective on the Success of Brand Extensions
It is common for brands to extend into additional product categories. The most successful extensions involve brands that are associated with benefits that are valued in the extension category. We propose that brand extension success also depends on the accessibility of these benefit associations and that accessibility, in turn, depends on the amount of interference by competing brand associations (e.g., category associations). One implication of …
Stimulus Context and the Formation of Consumer Ideals
When a choice set consists of a distribution of alternatives with correlated benefits and costs, consumers often exhibit single-peaked preferences—they prefer an alternative having moderate costs and benefits. Theories disagree about how adding additional lower benefit/lower cost or higher benefit/higher cost alternatives to this choice set will affect relative preferences for the initial set of alternatives. Prototype theory predicts that adding…
The Influence of Price Discount Framing on the Evaluation of a Product Bundle
Bundle offers consisting of two or more products often include a price discount. The impact of the price discount on the perceived attractiveness of the bundle has been shown to depend on which product is discounted. It has been argued that discounts are more effective when they are assigned to the product that will receive the most weight in the overall evaluation of the bundle. We propose that the perceived value of the discount may also depend…
The Influence of Generic Advertising on Brand Preferences
More than a billion dollars is spent annually on generic advertisements that promote the consumption of commodity goods. Generic advertising is designed to increase primary demand, or the “size of the pie,” without affecting selective demand, or the “share of the pie.” We find evidence to the contrary—generic advertising increases the consumer's sensitivity to changes in price and systematically alters brand preferences. These effects of generic …
The Influence of Avatars on Online Consumer Shopping Behavior
An impediment to Web-based retail sales is the impersonal nature of Web-based shopping. A solution to this problem is to use an avatar to deliver product information. An avatar is a graphic representation that can be animated by means of computer technology. Study 1 shows that using an avatar sales agent leads to more satisfaction with the retailer, a more positive attitude toward the product, and a greater purchase intention. Study 2 shows that …
Context-Dependent Effects of Goal Primes
We provide evidence that goal priming effects are context dependent. We show that goal primes encourage prime-consistent behavior when the behavioral context is common and prime-inconsistent behavior when the behavioral context is uncommon. While the prime-consistent behavior is compatible with existing theory, the prime-inconsistent behavior poses a theoretical challenge. We argue that uncommon behavioral contexts encourage the release of a prim…
Protection of Prior Learning in Complex Consumer Learning Environments
As a product category evolves, consumers have the opportunity to learn a series of feature-benefit associations. Initially, consumers learn that some features predict a critical benefit, whereas other features do not. Subsequently, consumers have the opportunity to assess if previously predictive features, or novel features, predict new product benefits. Surprisingly, later learning is characterized by attenuated learning about previously predict…
Behavioral Consistency and Inconsistency in the Resolution of Goal Conflict
During the course of a day, consumers experience choices that involve goal conflict (e.g., eat tasty vs. healthy food, recreate vs. work, relax vs. act). In some cases, an initial behavior is followed by a similar behavior. In other cases, an initial behavior is followed by an opposing behavior. We posit that a passive guidance system can nonconsciously guide behavior when there is goal conflict and, hence, determine whether a sequence of behavio…
The Influence of Causal Conditional Reasoning on the Acceptance of Product Claims
The believability of product claims depends on the consumer's ability to generate disabling conditions (i.e., other events blocking a cause from having its effect) and alternative causes (i.e., other events causing the outcome). The consideration of disabling conditions hurts the believability of product claims supported by arguments stated in a cause → effect and a ∼ effect → ∼cause format, whereas the consideration of alternative causes hurts t…
Letting Good Opportunities Pass Us By: Examining the Role of Mind-Set during Goal Pursuit
It is generally accepted that forming an implementation intention promotes goal pursuit and achievement. Forming an implementation intention encourages people to develop a plan, to prepare for events that allow for the execution of the plan, and to efficiently respond to these opportunities. Yet, forming an implementation intention may not be universally beneficial. An implementation intention may encourage the use of means that are part of the p…
Psychology (41 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (29 works) · Business (28 works) · Computer Science (28 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (19 works) · Economics (19 works) · Cognitive psychology (18 works) · Mathematics (18 works) · Marketing (17 works)