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This research investigates conditions under which metacognitive experiences of difficulty can threaten the perceived understanding of such well-established brands and what can happen when the sense of understanding is threatened in this way. This research shows that (1) metacognitive difficulty in thinking about a brand leads to a reduction in the perceived understanding of a well-established brand (Experiments 1 and 2); (2) the effects of metacognitive experience occur only when that experience is deemed to be relevant to inferring the state of brand representation (Experiments 2 and 3); (3) when perceived understanding is threatened, consumers are more influenced by an available cue in judging or formulating purchase intentions for an established brand (e.g., the healthfulness of McDonald’s foods; Experiments 3 and 4); and (4) this effect is moderated by the extent to which consumers’ motivation to maintain cognitive closure by seizing on available information is either chronically high (Experiment 3) or intensified by time pressure (Experiment 4).

The framework focusing on the perceived understanding of brands makes it possible to predict effects not anticipated by existing models. First, this research suggests that metacognitive difficulty can sometimes lead to more favorable outcomes for the brand. That is, when an existing representation involves a negative judgment of an attribute, metacognitive difficulty may increase the likelihood of considering new information because it can motivate consumers to question their brand understanding, setting the stage for persuasion to occur.

From the practitioner’s point of view, these findings suggest that metacognitive difficulty could increase consumers’ acceptance of marketing claims and thus elicit improvements in brand evaluations under certain conditions. For example, when consumers feel time-pressured to make a decision (e.g., when many customers are waiting behind them in line), anything that threatens their sense of brand understanding (e.g., a new menu, a redesigned logo, a change in packaging) may prompt greater openness to new information.

Biography
Kyoungmi Lee is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Kansas State University. She received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Her research focuses on metacognitive processes and their effects on brand perception and social identification and symbolic consumption. She has previously published in Journal of Consumer Psychology. She teaches courses on marketing communications and retailing. 

Sharon Shavitt is Walter H. Stellner Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she is also on the faculty in the Department of Psychology, the Survey Research Laboratory, and the Institute of Communications Research. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from the Ohio State University and did postdoctoral research in psychology at Indiana University. Her research focuses primarily on the cross-cultural factors that affect consumer persuasion, self-presentation, and survey responding, and she has published in outlets such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Sharon Shavitt served as cochair of the Association for Consumer Research 2008 conference and has been associate editor of Journal of Consumer Psychology. She teaches courses on consumer behavior, marketing communications, and survey methodology and has appeared numerous times on the university’s “List of Excellent Teachers.” Sharon is a former treasurer of the Association for Consumer Research and serves on the Society for Consumer Psychology’s Education and Training Committee.

J Marketing Research, Volume 46, Number 2, April 2009
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