As processing difficulty associated with a product increases, information about a subsequently encountered product becomes easier to process, leading to more favorable evaluations of it (a contrast effect). If, however, the two products are categorized as part of the same overall experience,...

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...

The context in which a product is seen influences the internal standard that consumers use to judge both this and other products. Two experiments showed that a product was judged as less expensive in a high-priced context than in a low-priced context even though the product's actual price was...

Participants experiencing positive or negative affect judged products described by brand and attribute information. Four studies using parameter-estimation and reaction-time procedures determined whether the impact of affect on brand name was the result of its influence on (a) participants'...

Consumers often imagine themselves in a scene and engage in such self-imagery while processing information. The goals that they have when they engage in such imagery (e.g., a goal to construct a story of the experience vs. a goal to acquire information) can influence how the mental images they...