Abstracts » Social sciences

The assessment of alternative measures of consumer expertise

Article Abstract:

This study assesses a number of different measures of consumer expertise by examining their ability to predict correct choices in three stimulus-based choice tasks and to support a number of hypotheses derived from the cognitive psychology and consumer behavior literature. The hypotheses concern how consumer expertise should affect the content and organization of knowledge for a product class and reasons for choice across different usage contexts. After a factor analysis of the different measures of consumer expertise that yielded three orthogonal factors, we used regression and TOBIT analyses to examine the effect of each factor on the number of correct choices and the hypothesized differences in the content and organization of knowledge and reasons for choice in the choice tasks. Two of the factors, "subjective/objective knowledge" and "friends owning motorcycles," predict the number of correct choices in the stimulus-based choice tasks, while the subjective/objective-knowledge factor supports almost all of the hypothesized relationships for the content and organization of knowledge and reasons for choice. The third factor, "magazines read/motorcycles owned," also supports many of the relationships concerning general knowledge. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Measurement, Consumer behavior, Expertise

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The effects of verbal and visual components of advertisements on brand attitudes and attitude toward the advertisement

Article Abstract:

Visual and emotional impacts of advertisements were measured to determine the effectiveness of valence visual information in advertising campaigns. A group of 69 students viewed advertising containing affect-laden photography under laboratory conditions; the advertisements were for fictitious new products. The results of the testing indicate that attitudes toward the advertising campaigns and the products introduced were affected by the affect-laden photography used by the ads. However, product attribute beliefs seemed to be performed independently from the amount of such photographs used within the advertisements. The laboratory test results are analyzed from a a number of perspectives.

Analysis, Advertising research

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Effects of initial product judgments on subsequent memory-based judgments

Article Abstract:

Initial judgments based on stimulus do not have an effect on later memory-based judgments of the same or similar products. An experiment involving 64 college students at a midwestern university demonstrates that initial judgments about products influence later global product judgments, only when the initial decisions are stimulus-based. Purchase patterns and preferences are therefore more the result of global memory than the recollection of factual information.

Psychological aspects

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