1. Evaluating ambiguous offerings
- Author
-
Rodolphe Durand, Romain Boulongne, IESE Business School, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC Paris), and HEC Paris Research Paper Series
- Subjects
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management ,History ,Ambiguity ,050402 sociology ,experimental methods ,Polymers and Plastics ,Strategy and Management ,media_common.quotation_subject ,050109 social psychology ,Evaluación social ,social evaluation ,050105 experimental psychology ,Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering ,Categories ,0504 sociology ,Management of Technology and Innovation ,0502 economics and business ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Business and International Management ,Métodos experimentales ,Categorias ,media_common ,Ambigüedad ,Experimental methods ,05 social sciences ,Social evaluation ,Data science ,Categorization ,ambiguity ,[SHS.GESTION]Humanities and Social Sciences/Business administration ,categories and categorization ,Psychology ,050203 business & management - Abstract
This paper studies how audience members categorize and evaluate ambiguous offerings. Depending on whether audience members categorize ambiguous offerings based on prototypes or goals, they activate two distinct cognitive mechanisms and evaluate differently ambiguous offerings. We expect that when audiences engage in goal- versus prototype-based categorization, their evaluation of ambiguous products increases. We theorize that, under goal-based categorization, the perceived utility of unclear attributes increases for audiences, which leads them to evaluate more positively ambiguous product offerings. We test and find support for these direct and mediated relationships through a series of laboratory, online, and field experiments. Overall, this study offers important implications for research on product and market categories, optimal distinctiveness, and market agents’ cognitive ascription of value.
- Published
- 2021