How the Order of Sampled Experiential Products Affects Choice

Abstract

Babson College. The authors thank Jonathan Levav, Nancy Upton, and the anonymous JMR reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Dilip Soman served as associate editor for this article. DIPAYAN BISWAS, DHRUV GREWAL, and ANNE ROGGEVEEN*The results of five experiments reveal that when sampling a series of experiential products (e.g., beverages, music), consumers prefer the product sampled second in a series of two desirable products but relatively prefer the product sampled first in a series of two undesirable products. The underlying process for both outcomes is a recency effect, such that there is better recall for the most recently sampled experiential product. The recency effect observed for experiential products reverses to a primacy effect when sampling nonexperiential products (e.g., scissors). The authors also demonstrate that the placement of an undesirable experiential product in conjunction with two desirable experiential products can exaggerate preference for the later-sampled desirable product (when the undesirable product is sampled first) or result in preference for the earlier-sampled desirable product (when the undesirable product is sampled between the two desirable products). However, the preference for the earlier-sampled desirable product holds only if there is no time delay between the sampling of the products or between the sampling and the choice evaluations.

Shall I Tell You Now or Later? Assimilation and Contrast in the Evaluation of Experiential Products

“…Although the sampling of experiential products can result in both cognitive and affective responses (Nowlis and Shiv 2005;Shiv and Nowlis 2004), the evaluation of many experiential products, such as chocolate or wine, is primarily affective in nature (Biswas et al 2010). Affective reactions result from bottom-up processing and occur automatically in response to a sampling experience (Nowlis and Shiv 2005).…”

“…Biswas et al (2010) demonstrate that when consumers sample experiential products in order, product experiences later in the sequence are often assimilated with those earlier in the sequence such that a positive experience is less preferred when it is preceded by a negative experience. None of this research, however, has examined how product information order influences consumers' affective evaluation of the experience.…”

“…Because the evaluation of experiential products is primarily affect-based (Biswas, Grewal, and Roggeveen 2010), this current research focuses on the effect of product information, learned before or after trial on consumers' affective evaluations. We show that the effect of product information on the evaluation of an experiential product depends on the order in which such information is presented.…”

Final Sampling Bias in Haptic Judgments: How Final Touch Affects Decision-Making

“…For example, items presented first and last tend to be better recalled (Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966;Murdock, 1962), which are called primacy and recency effects, respectively. The serial position in presenting items also affects preference judgments (Biswas, Grewal, & Roggeveen, 2010;Carney & Banaji, 2012;Li & Epley, 2009;Mantonakis, Rodero, Lesschaeve, & Hastie, 2009;Pandelaere, Millet, & Van den Bergh, 2010). However, when people choose one from multiple items, they usually do not care about the number of sampling items, or the order and duration of sampling.…”

Madonna or Don McLean? The effect of order of exposure on relative liking

“…Sood and Drèze (2006) also find that dissimilar movie sequels induce more liking than similar ones. Differences in similarity may also explain why Biswas, Grewal and Roggeveen (2010) obtained mainly recency effects for experiential products rather than the primacy effects we document. While our stimuli were very similar, their stimuli appear to be less similar.…”