Executive Summary
Suppose that you were shopping for a set of trendy new coffee mugs and noticed some on a nearby table or shelf. Might your evaluation of how trendy the mugs are be affected by the display fixture’s surface material (e.g., the sheath of glass or wood beneath the product)? There is reason to believe so.
This article focuses on an important theoretical and practical question that has been ignored in the context effects literature: whether and how different modes of cognition—namely, holistic versus analytic cognition—affect the direction of context effects arising from different display fixtures. The authors suggest that holistic cognition, which can be prompted by an interdependent self-view, involves perceiving separate pieces of data as related or continuous parts of a larger integrated unit. This implies that holistic processors are likely to exhibit an assimilation effect on their product evaluations. Conversely, analytic cognition, which can be prompted by an independent self-view, involves not only treating individual pieces of data as separate and autonomous elements but also attending to an object’s distinctive properties in relation to others. Thus, analytic processors are expected to exhibit a contrast effect on their product evaluations.
One lab experiment and one field study provide converging support for the theorizing. In the lab experiment, participants were induced to employ either a holistic or analytic mode of cognition by making salient their interdependent versus independent self. Then, they examined a neutral product—a mug—displayed on either a glass or a wood table and evaluated the product on the dimensions of its trendiness and naturalness. The results on such judgment measures, along with thoughts and other choice-related measures, support the theorizing. Specifically, holistic processors exhibited assimilation effects, evaluating the mug as more modern and less natural when it was displayed on a glass table than when it was displayed on a wood table. However, analytic processors displayed contrast effects, viewing the mug as more modern and less natural when it was displayed on a wood table than when it was displayed on a glass table.
The field study not only replicates the lab results by using a different product (a wine holder), and employing a different type of display surface material (i.e., tablecloth made of either a metallic fabric or a coarse burlap) but also identified an important boundary condition; specifically, it showed that if the target product has extreme values on the evaluative dimensions (e.g., it is extremely natural or trendy), the display surface material will not exert any context effects. Finally, the field study adopts a realistic means of manipulating modes of cognition by using posters that feature either an interdependent or an independent self-view.
This research contributes to theory by clarifying how and why the direction of context effects can depend on people’s mode of cognition. It also offers important practical implications. For example, if marketers want to influence consumers’ product perceptions, they can do so by carefully selecting retail/display fixture materials and/or by actively managing the kind of cognition that shoppers use (e.g., by using salient self-view altering signage).
Biography
Rui (Juliet) Zhu is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in Marketing from the University of Minnesota and her BA in Economics from University of International Business and Economics in China. Her research interests include consumer information processing and psychology, self-regulation, music effects, design and structural effects of physical environment, and experiential processing. Her research has been published in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Joan Meyers-Levy is Holden-Werlich Professor of Marketing in Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests encompass a variety of consumer-related issues, such as persuasion; people’s processing of visual, verbal, and other sensory information; their use of alternative types or styles of information processing; and how ad or environmental contextual factors (e.g., music, room height) or individual difference factors (e.g., gender, self-construal) affect people’s processing and responses. Joan has published her work in leading outlets, such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Marketing. She has been actively involved in numerous marketing-related professional organizations and conferences and was recognized for her extensive research contributions with the Society for Consumer Psychology Fellow Award.
J Marketing Research, Volume 46, Number 1, February 2009
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