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Contemporary developments in material duplication promise product alternatives that are physically and sensorially indistinguishable from incumbent offerings. When fully realized, such duplicate offerings should obsolete the incumbents as a consequence of wider availability and lower monetary and social costs. Disruption will be impeded, however, if consumers favor incumbent products on the basis of non-material qualities. The authors show that the influence of such qualities depends on both the product category and characteristics of the consumer. In particular, when a creator is central to the product and when the consumer is inclined toward extraordinary beliefs, the influence of origin looms especially large. By contrasting origin and substance, the present research exposes dualistic thinking in consumers’ product evaluations, enriches prior research on authenticity and extraordinary beliefs, and contributes to the stubborn problem of technology adoption.

Perceptual discrimination is fundamental to rational choice in many product categories yet rarely examined in consumer research. The present research investigates discrimination as it pertains to consumers’ ability to identify differences—or the lack thereof—among gustatory stimuli. Three experiments reveal systematic bias resulting from the presence of common visual and verbal product cues. Particularly noteworthy is the finding that the amount of bias induced by a subtle, nonevaluative cue can far exceed the bias induced by overt and well‐established evaluative cues. In addition, the effects these cues have on perceptual discrimination diverge from the effects they have on preference.

Prior research suggests that consumers are forgiving of a price increase that is commensurate with increased vendor costs. We argue that the perceived fairness of the price increase will also depend on the alignability of the cost and price increases, such that alignable increases will be perceived as more acceptable than nonalignable increases. Moreover, we predict that when a cost increase is nonalignable, consumers will be more receptive to a service price increase than a goods price increase. Evidence from a series of experiments supports both predictions.

Prevailing wisdom assumes that brand equity increases when a brand touts its desirable attributes. We report conditions under which the use of attribute information to promote a product can shift the locus of equity from brand to attribute, thereby reducing the attractiveness of extension products. This effect is moderated by the degree of ambiguity in the learning environment, such that prevailing wisdom is refuted when ambiguity is low but is supported when ambiguity is high. Copyright 2003 by the University of Chicago.

A series of studies demonstrates that consumers are inclined to believe that the selling price of a good or service is substantially higher than its fair price. Consumers appear sensitive to several reference points-including past prices, competitor prices, and cost of goods sold-but underestimate the effects of inflation, overattribute price differences to profit, and fail to take into account the full range of vendor costs. Potential corrective interventions-such as providing historical price information, explaining price differences, and cueing costs-were only modestly effective. These results are considered in the context of a four-dimensional transaction space that illustrates sources of perceived unfairness for both individual and multiple transactions. ispartof: Journal of Consumer Research vol:29 issue:4 pages:474-491 status: published

Consumer knowledge is seldom complete or errorless. Therefore, the self-assessed validity of knowledge and consequent knowledge calibration (i.e., the correspondence between self-assessed and actual validity) is an important issue for the study of consumer decision making. In this article we describe methods and models used in calibration research. We then review a wide variety of empirical results indicating that high levels of calibration are achieved rarely, moderate levels that include some degree of systematic bias are the norm, and confidence and accuracy are sometimes completely uncorrelated. Finally, we examine the explanations of miscalibration and offer suggestions for future research. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.

A series of experiments illustrates a learning process that enhances brand equity at the expense of quality-determining attributes. When the relationship between brand name and product quality is learned prior to the relationship between product attributes and quality, inhibition of the latter may occur. The phenomenon is shown to be robust, but its influence appears sensitive to contextual variations in the learning environment. Tests of process are inconsistent with attentional explanations and popular models of causal reasoning, but they are supportive of associative learning models that portray learners as inherently forward looking. P urchase decisions are based on predictions of product performance. Consumers base their predictions in part on product cues and are accurate to the extent that they have properly learned the relationship between the cues and performance. Consumer research has devoted little attention to this learning process despite its fundamental importance (Hutchinson and Alba 1991; Meyer 1987). In the present research we examine consumer learning of product cues as predictors of product quality with particular emphasis on the distinction between brand and attribute cues. To illustrate, consider the cases in which consumers rely strictly on either brand or attribute cues to predict quality. If consumers learn the relationship between product attributes and quality, they will differentiate among brands that possess different attributes and treat as commodities those brands that share the same attributes. Once the predictive rule is learned, it may be applied to any new brand that possesses the attributes. In contrast, consumers who rely strictly on brand cues will ignore the underlying attributes and may incorrectly differentiate physically identical brands. The latter case is important because it can be costly and is not uncommon (such as when consumers pay high premiums for branded drugs that are chemically identical to their generic counterparts). An appealing explanation of this phenomenon is that consumers are unaware of the attributes of these brands. Indeed, firms attempt to foster such ignorance by making attribute information difficult to find or process (Bergen, Dutta, and Shugan 1996; Hoch and Deighton 1989). The present research investigates whether consumers will routinely learn the determinants of product quality when attribute cues are *Stijn M. J. van Osselaer is assistant professor of marketing, University of Chicago. Joseph W. Alba is distinguished professor of marketing, University of Florida. This work was supported by the Beatrice Foods Co. Faculty Research Fund at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. The authors thank Alan Cooke, Joffre Swait, Chris Janiszewski, and Bart Weitz for their helpful comments. freely available and processing is unconstrained. We suggest that learning can be suppressed even under these relatively favorable conditions due to the learning phenomenon known as blocking.

The intensity of price discounting by retailers and manufacturers raises important questions about consumer price judgments. In the extreme, discounting can take the form of frequent but shallow discounts or deep but infrequent discounts. The research reported here explores the effects of these strategies on consumer estimation of price levels for competing stores and brands. In an initial experiment in which subjects made brand choices over time, a depth effect was observed that contrasted with the frequency effect found in previous research. Subsequent experiments identified the conditions under which depth (vs. frequency) characteristics of price data dominate consumers' price-estimation judgments. Frequency information is more influential when sets of interstore or interbrand comparative prices exhibit complex and overlapping distributions (hence creating processing difficulty); in contrast, a depth bias occurs when prices have a simpler, dichotomous distribution. These results place pragmatically meaningful limitations on the influence of frequency information and illustrate the importance of context in determining consumer price judgments in a promotional environment. Copyright 1999 by the University of Chicago.

A widespread practice in grocery store advertising is to compare the advertised store's prices to a competitor's prices on multiple items. An important, but largely unexplored, issue is how this information is processed and used in conjunction with prior beliefs to influence price perceptions. In our initial studies we manipulated prior beliefs and two data-based cues--frequency of price advantage and magnitude of price advantage--to determine their relative influence on consumer price perceptions. Results indicate that prior beliefs affected price perceptions but that the frequency cue exerted a dominating influence. Several follow-up studies demonstrate the robustness of this phenomenon across a variety of presentational and instructional conditions. Coauthors are Susan M. Broniarczyk, Terence A. Shimp, and Joel E. Urbany. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

Three experiments examined the effects of situational factors on the ability to learn simple rules for classifying products and estimating prices. In each experiment, multiattribute information about stereo speakers was presented to subjects in a training phase. However, only one attribute was diagnostic. Analytic processing (i.e., the ability to isolate the diagnostic attribute in a subsequent test of product knowledge) was measured. Results showed that analytic processing varied significantly as a function of memory load, processing goals. type of information search, and the relative perceptual salience of product attributes. Surprisingly little holistic (i.e., multiattribute) processing was observed among nonanalytic subjects. Most of these subjects relied on a small subset of attributes, often placing heavy emphasis on a single nondiagnostic attribute. Copyright 1991 by the University of Chicago.

Traditional explorations of inference making have examined consumers' reactions to product descriptions that lack information about salient attributes. Such studies frequently report systematically lower evaluations of incompletely described alternatives along with a generally low incidence of unprompted attribute-to-attribute inference. We argue that the nature and likelihood of an inference are dependent on the cues available at the time of decision making, and that some cues may exert a disproportionate influence on inference behavior. In several experiments in which subjects were presented with competing cues that implied different values of a missing attribute, we show that intuitive beliefs about the relationships between attributes are perceived as a particularly reliable basis for interattribute inference. Strong beliefs appear capable of superseding other compelling cues and may induce consumers to generate inferences spontaneously. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.

The purpose of this article is to review basic empirical results from the psychological literature in a way that provides a useful foundation for research on consumer knowledge. A conceptual organization for this diverse literature is provided by two fundamental distinctions. First, consumer expertise is distinguished from product-related experience. Second, five distinct aspects, or dimensions, of expertise are identified: cognitive effort, cognitive structure, analysis, elaboration, and memory. Improvements in the first two dimensions are shown to have general beneficial effects on the latter three. Analysis, elaboration, and memory are shown to have more specific interrelationships. The empirical findings related to each dimension are reviewed and, on the basis of those findings, specific research hypotheses about the effects of expertise on consumer behavior are suggested.

The proposition is advanced that knowledge about the mere number of positive and negative attributes possessed by a brand is an important component of a consumer's knowledge structure. A series of experiments is presented that illustrates the unique character of frequency knowledge and its potential role in decision making. In general, it is shown that frequency knowledge can influence judgment and choice, particularly when other types of information have been poorly encoded, poorly remembered, or poorly understood.

An experiment, which examines the relationship between cognition and attitude toward a product as a function of time and the presence of information about a competing product, is described. A scheme, which partitions cognitive responses into categories on the basis of their relative abstractness and, therefore, memorability, is proposed. Results show that the proposed scheme accounts for a significant amount of attitude variance and outperforms the traditional cognitive response scheme, especially after a delay. Results also show that, contrary to recent theory and research regarding the lack of correlation between attitude and recall, recall can be a predictor of attitude given the proper context and a theoretically justifiable recall measure.