Elaboration on experience: Effects on attribute importance

✍ Scribed by Cynthia Huffman

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 160 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0742-6046
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6793(199708)14:5<451::aid-mar2>3.0.co;2-7

✦ Synopsis

This article examines how elaborating on prior experiences influences attribute importance. The first experiment shows that elaboration on usage experiences increases the importance of attributes related to product consumption, whereas elaboration on purchase experiences increases the importance of attributes related to the purchase transaction, such as price and brand name. The second experiment examines whether elaboration on prior experiences, through increased accessibility of purchase criteria in memory, reduces a common context effect. Results show that subjects who elaborate on past experiences are less influenced by framing in the external context (i.e., listing some features and not others in the brand descriptions), relative to subjects who do not elaborate.