Participants estimated the attractiveness of vacations described in 2 travel brochures. The information about 1 vacation was conveyed in a narrative that described the sequence of events that would occur. In contrast, information about the other vacation was conveyed in an ostensibly unorganized list. Vacations were generally evaluated more favorably when they were described in a narrative than when their features were simply listed. Moreover, this difference increased when (a) negative features of the vacations were mentioned, (b) pictures accompanied the text information, or (c) recipients were encouraged to imagine themselves having the experiences described. Although narrative forms of information elicited more extreme affective reactions than list forms, this did not account for the difference in their effectiveness. Rather, the advantage of narratives was attributed to (a) their structural similarity to information acquired through daily life experiences and (b) the use of a holistic—as opposed to a piecemeal—strategy for computing judgments.

An affect-confirmation process is proposed to explain the conditions in which information that is similar in valence (i.e., evaluatively consistent) with a person's mood is weighted more heavily in product judgments. Specifically, the affect that participants experience as a result of a transitory mood state may appear to either confirm or disconfirm their reactions to product information, leading them to give this information more or less weight when evaluating the product as a whole. This affective confirmation typically occurs when hedonic criteria are considered more important in evaluation than utilitarian criteria. Four experiments confirmed implications of this conceptualization.

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for their support during the research process. The author also acknowledges the University of Illinois marketing, social cognition, and affect groups for their help during the research process and the editor, associate editor, and reviewers of this article for their thoughtful comments. The research and writing for this project was supported by funds from the J. M. Jones Chair at the University of Illinois and research grants (HKUST6053/01H and DAG00/01.BM49) from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

Cognitive priming procedures were used to identify the unique effects that luck-related concepts have on consumer behavior. The effects of these concepts could theoretically influence behavior through the elicitation of positive affect or via temporary changes in participants' self representations of how lucky they feel. An initial experiment showed that priming Asian consumers with lucky numbers independently influenced both their perceptions of personal luck and the positive affect they reported experiencing. Subsequent experiments, however, showed that the effect of these primes on consumer behavior was mediated by momentary changes in how lucky people felt (i.e. changes in the self concept) rather than by the positive affect they were experiencing at the time. Exposing consumers to lucky numbers influenced their estimates of how likely they were to win a lottery (Experiment 2), their willingness to participate in such a lottery (Experiment 4), their evaluations of different promotional strategies (Experiment 3), and also the amount of money they were willing to invest in different financial options (Experiment 4). The effect of luck on behavior was also moderated by a person's regulatory focus.