What and how do consumer’s plethora of knowledge or countless subconscious evaluations in daily life have an influence on their judgment on products? A cognitive category becomes more accessible from memory in processing ambiguous stimuli.
(Higgins et al., 1977, 1981; Srull and Hyer 1979, 1980). Multiple primes make consumers more accessible to judgement. Categorization of primes provides the assimilation and contrast effects. In the early study, Herr. (1989) originally explained that judgements in the opposite direction from the primed category are considered contrast effects, while Judgements of the object as equivalent to the primed category are considered assimilation effects (Herr, 1989). In different perspectives, Hsiao (2002) developed assimilation and contrast effects by discovering a reciprocal shift in the context stimuli and the target stimuli. The perceptions of the target and contextual stimulus shifted either toward or away from each other simultaneously in assimilation and contrast situations respectively.
Previous contextual effect-related studies only concentrated on the influence of single contexts to people’s target judgment. In the results, those focused less on the effects of multiple contexts on target evaluation. This research, however, explores the idea that consumers usually compare multiple pieces of information in order to evaluate a product;
this paper will therefore examine the influence of multiple primes to product judgment.
This study integrates examinations of the Dimensional Range Overlap (Chien et al., 2010) and the Reciprocity Hypothesis (Hsiao, 2002). In addition, we develop (replicate) Lu’s master thesis (2014), extending the Dimensional Range Overlap and Reciprocity Hypothesis, which did not provide evidence of simultaneous shifts between dual contexts.
Previous contextual effect-related studies only concentrated on the influence of single contexts to people’s target judgment. In the results, those focused less on the effects of multiple contexts on target evaluation. This research, however, regards that consumer usually compare multiple information to evaluate on product, therefore this paper examines the influence of multiple primes to product judgment. This study integrate examinations of the Dimensional Range Overlap (Chien et al., 2010) and the Reciprocity Hypothesis (Hsiao, 2002). In addition, we replicate the Lu’s master thesis (2014), extending the Dimensional Range Overlap and Reciprocity Hypothesis, didn’t prove the evidence of simultaneous shift between the dual contexts.
The Dimensional Range Overlap Model by Chien, Wegner, Hsiao and Petty (2010) applies an overlap or non-overlap to determine the effect of assimilation or contrast effect movements of consumer judgments. It attempts to form “perception of amount of overlap between the target and context range”, so that it makes it possible to interpret overlap or lack of overlap between values of context and target. In detail, the amount of overlap is measured by three factors: the width of context range, the width of the target, and distance between the context and the target. Assimilation occurs if there is overlap between the context and the target. Contrast effect occurs if there is a lack of overlap between them.
However, the Dimensional Range Overlap Model has proven that measuring the distance between single context and target would be the amount of overlap. The Reciprocity Hypothesis (Hsiao, 2002), as mentioned earlier, manipulates overlap and non-overlap of target and contexts to test the mutual effects. It measures whether the prime and target show simultaneous shifts toward or away from each other, respectively. Hsiao’s Reciprocity Hypothesis (2002) also observes only one prime to determine contextual effect. Based on these studies, we also attempt to investigate the product judgement by
measuring overlap or non-overlap between primes and the target, as well as manipulating the simultaneous shift; however, our research replaces the mutual effect of multiple primes to the target.
We conducted four experiments to examine the influence of the primes to product judgement. The first experiment measures the effect of positive prime and negative prime, where non-overlap are manipulated between them. In the second experiment, we examine a shift of the target and positive prime. The third experiment shows the outcome of the target and negative prime. In the final experiment, we finally attempt how the target is shifted in the multiple contexts setting. All experiments follow three stages in procedure.
Stage 1 is the evaluation of a target’s advertisement. In Stage 2, we manipulate each context’s range based on the target’s evaluation from Stage 1. We conduct Stage 3 after two weeks with the purpose of minimizing any perception of the previously priming task.
Stage 3 finally measures for the respective contextual effects between two primes, each positive and negative prime with the target, and both prime with the target.
We have predicted the results of four experiments. For the first experiment, positive and negative primes will be contrasted away from each other, the occurrence of contrast effect, since both primes in are different valences with no overlap between them initially.
The next two experiments will show the assimilation effects for the shift between each positive and negative prime and the target because the target will be influenced by the overlap with both contexts. According to the Reciprocity Hypothesis, the contexts move simultaneously with the target in the situation where an overlap exists between them (Hsiao, 2002). In the final experiment, the mixed primed condition, the target will shift toward one of prime which overlaps more with the target, while both prime simultaneously overlap with the target. On the other hand, the target will be shifted away
from another prime which is non-overlapped with the target. Therefore, we have expected a contrast effect between two primes in the post-context effect.
These experiments would demonstrate the contextual effect in the setting of simultaneous shift of positive and negative primes. The target’s movement shows either assimilation with or contrast away from the primes. By using the Dimensional Range Overlap Model with the mixed prime condition, we have expected to prove that the target is assimilated more with the prime which owns a similarity with the target. On the other hand, the target is shifted away from another prime due to the difference between these two. They compare the product with memories of familiar brands. Post-priming situations which lead to assimilation and contrast effects are important for consumer’s decisions.
The previous study on contextual effect provided information into the contrast and assimilation effects of single primes as they affected each person. The focus of this study is to analyze the mutual effects of multiple primes with the goal of applying the results of these experiments to gradually more realistic situations in the future.