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.

Dimensions of Consumer Expertise

In theories and studies of persuasion, people's personal knowledge about persuasion agents' goals and tactics, and about how to skillfully cope with these, has been ignored. We present a model of how people develop and use persuasion knowledge to cope with persuasion attempts. We discuss what the model implies about how consumers use marketers' advertising and selling attempts to refine their product attitudes and attitudes toward the marketers themselves. We also explain how this model relates to prior research on consumer behavior and persuasion and what it suggests about the future conduct of consumer research.

The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts

The effects of word-of-mouth (WOM) communications and specific attribute information on product evaluations were investigated. A face-to-face WOM communication was more persuasive than a printed format (experiment 1). Although a strong WOM effect was found, this effect was reduced or eliminated when a prior impression of the target brand was available from memory or when extremely negative attribute information was presented (experiment 2). The results suggest that diverse, seemingly unrelated judgmental phenomena—such as the vividness effect, the perseverance effect, and the negativity effect—can be explained through the accessibility-diagnosticity model.

Effects of Word-of-Mouth and Product-Attribute Information on Persuasion: An Accessibility-Diagnosticity Perspective

This article examines how consumer decision making is influenced by automatically evoked task-induced affect and by cognitions that are generated in a more controlled manner on exposure to alternatives in a choice task. Across two experiments respondents chose between two alternatives: one (chocolate cake) associated with more intense positive affect but less favorable cognitions, compared to a second (fruit salad) associated with less favorable affect but more favorable cognitions. Findings from the two experiments suggest that if processing resources are limited, spontaneously evoked affective reactions rather than cognitions tend to have a greater impact on choice. As a result, the consumer is more likely to choose the alternative that is superior on the affective dimension but inferior on the cognitive dimension (e.g., chocolate cake). In contrast, when the availability of processing resources is high, cognitions related to the consequences of choosing the alternatives tend to have a bigger impact on choice compared to when the availability of these resources is low. As a result, the consumer is more likely to choose the alternative that is inferior on the affective dimension but superior on the cognitive dimension (e.g., fruit salad). The moderating roles of the mode of presentation of the alternatives and of a personality variable related to impulsivity are also reported.

Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making

The diffusion theory literature offers a fairly well-developed conceptual framework for the study of communications. As developed across a number of disciplines, diffusion applies to the flow of information, ideas, and products; its uniqueness is its focus on interpersonal communication transfer. This paper offers new theoretical propositions to advance consumer diffusion research and to provide a foundation for diffusion modeling.

A Propositional Inventory for New Diffusion Research

A common belief among marketing practitioners is that increasing the vividness of a message enhances its persuasiveness. This belief has received support in experimental investigations, but vividne...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3151792.pdf

Detecting and Explaining Vividness Effects in Attitudinal Judgments

The effect of vividness on attitudinal judgments is a controversial issue. Experimental evidence indicates that vividness often has no effect on attitudinal judgments; however, there is also evidence that vividness can enhance or undermine the favorableness of attitudinal judgments. In this article, the authors introduce the availability-valence hypothesis to predict and explain the effects of vividness and to account for the frequent observation of a null effect.

Examining the Vividness Controversy: An Availability-Valence Interpretation

The authors examine the effect of type of elaboration on information processing and product judgments. Research participants were shown print advertisements promoting a camera in which the pictoria...

Jolita Kisielius

Papers

Detecting and Explaining Vividness Effects in Attitudinal Judgments

Examining the Vividness Controversy: An Availability-Valence Interpretation

The effect of type of elaboration on advertisement processing and judgment