The formation of a consumer's brand related schemas results from prior exposure to brand information through advertising, product experience and other sources. A framework based on categorization theory, priming and the advertising/evidence interaction research, investigates the effect of arousal of schema based expectations on consumer evaluative judgments. The two step model in advertising/evidence interaction research suggests that advertising at first arouses tentative expectations because of the partisan nature of the source. In the second step, the credibility of such ad-induced expectations are evaluated using available evidence in the form of product search and experience to influence evaluative judgments of quality. Priming increases the accessibility of a conceptual category, thereby increasing the likelihood of the use of that category to encode new information. The main argument, is that priming with a brand/logo (well known brand prime, unknown brand prime or no prime) activates brand based schemas and arouses expectations similar to ad-based expectations about the brand. The focus of this research is to show that schema based expectations aroused through priming, in conjunction with evidence about product performance (which may be ambiguous or unambiguous), influence brand evaluations and judgments of quality. Priming effects are predicted to be similar for repeat purchase and expensive durable products. Higher levels of attitude and intentions are predicted with "well known brand primes" than an "unknown brand prime". Information processing differences between concept driven (or top-down) and data driven (or bottom-up) processes are also predicted. Data collected from student samples shows support for the main hypothesis--that schema-based expectations aroused through priming interacts with product evidence on quality judgments. The effect is however strongest for unknown brand primes than well known brand primes showing that priming with unknown brand primes may be more successful. Subjects showed equal levels of satisfaction of information provided across the two product classes. Attitudes were also more positive with "well known primes" than with "unknown brand primes". Surprisingly, unambiguous product evidence did not lead to greater confidence in judgments than ambiguous evidence. Partial support was found for information processing differences across the prime and evidence conditions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-9021 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Sanyal, Abhijit |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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