Past research (Kruger, Wirtz, Van Boven, & Altermatt, 2004) proposed that people use the effort of the producer as a heuristic for the quality of the product. In contrast, two experiments show that consumers' inferences from effort information are highly malleable. Participants were either explicitly exposed to one of two applicable naive theories ("good-art-takes-effort" vs. "good-art-takes-talent") or the order of judgment was reversed (quality judgment first vs. talent judgment first) to activate different naive theories more subtly. In both cases, participants only inferred high quality from high effort when an "effort" theory was rendered accessible, but not when a "talent" theory was rendered accessible. We conclude that judgment tasks prime naive theories that can serve as inference rules, illustrating that heuristics can be constructed on the spot.
Consumers like the same accessories (eye glasses and earrings) more, and are more likely to recommend a purchase, when the accessories are displayed on a familiar other's regular image rather than mirror image. However, image format does not affect consumers' judgments when the other person is unfamiliar. These findings reflect differences in consumers' natural exposure history: we see others more often face-to-face than in the mirror, giving their regular image a fluency advantage; this advantage does not apply to unfamiliar others, whose image is disfluent in either presentation format. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.
Recent technological advances in interactive marketing allow consumers to use a ‘virtual mirror’ (created with their own digital photo uploaded to a retailer's Web site) to see how products would look on them. The virtual mirror can be used for simulated product experiences in virtual shopping environments (e.g., trying a garment or a pair of sunglasses in an Internet shopping mall). To enhance our understanding of the managerial implications of this new marketing tool, we test whether the images consumers select to construct their ‘virtual mirror’ influence their product evaluations. Psychological theorizing suggests that it is difficult to distinguish one's reaction to the product from one's reaction to the personal image to which the product is applied, giving rise to misattribution effects. Consistent with this assumption, three studies show that consumers evaluate a product more favorably the more they like the image used to construct a virtual mirror (for themselves or for someone they personally know); the variables used to enhance consumers’ liking of their virtual mirror include the consumer's own facial expression (Study 1), a visual enhancement of the image (Study 2), and a regular vs. mirror image format (Study 3).
Based on the fluency theory, a recent study by Dohle and Siegrist revealed that complex pharmaceutical drug names are perceived as more hazardous than simple drug names and thus negatively influence patients' willingness to buy. This study explored the malleability of the name fluency effect on pharmaceutical drug perception by examining the fluency effect in the domain of risk versus advancedness judgment. The findings indicated that depending on how the fluency feeling is interpreted in the context of initial judgment task (e.g. advancedness vs risk), disfluent drug names can positively influence a patient's perception of the drug, reversing the typical fluency effect.
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