Geeta Menon

A Sound Idea: Phonetic Effects of Brand Names on Consumer Judgments

In this article we examine a phenomenon known as sound symbolism, where the sound of a word conveys meanings. Specifically, brand names are composed of individual sounds called phonemes and we investigate how this phonetic structure of brand names affects a consumers evaluation of products and their underlying attributes. We demonstrate that consumers use information they gather from phonemes in brand names to infer product attributes and to evaluate brands. We also demonstrate that the manner in which phonetic effects of brand names manifest is automatic in as much as it is uncontrollable, outside awareness and effortless.

When a Day Means More than a Year: Effects of Temporal Framing on Judgments of Health Risk

We demonstrate the differential effects of framing health hazards as occurring every day versus every year, two reference periods that objectively refer to the present but subjectively seem different. Through three studies, we show that every day framing makes risks appear more proximal and concrete than every year framing, resulting in increased self-risk perceptions, intentions to exercise precautionary behavior, concern and anxiety about the hazard, and effectiveness of risk communication. Across different health domains, we show that, while temporal frames moderate self-positivity biases (study 1), difficulty of preventive behaviors (study 2) and outcome valence (study 3) moderate temporal framing effects.

Non-Conscious Influences on Consumer Choice

While consumer choice research has dedicated considerable research attention to aspects of choice that are deliberative and conscious, only limited attention has been paid to aspects of choice that occur outside of conscious awareness. We review relevant research that suggests that consumer choice is a mix of conscious and nonconscious influences, and argue that the degree to which nonconscious influences affect choice is much greater than many choice researchers believe. Across a series of research domains, these influences are found to include stimulus that are not consciously perceived by the consumer, nonconscious downstream effects of a consciously perceived stimuli or thought process, and decision processes that occur entirely outside of awareness.

Behavioral Frequency Judgments: An Accessibility-Diagnosticity Framework

Marketing research surveys often elicit behavioral frequency reports. When estimating the number of times a respondent engages in a behavior, s/he may use information about the behavior stored in memory, information provided by the response context, or both. Based on an accessibility-diagnosticity framework, we theorize that the probability of using context-based information in forming a frequency judgment is inversely proportional to the diagnosticity of the alternative inputs accessible in memory. That is, when memory-based information is accessible and diagnostic, contextual information is not used; when memory-based information is accessible but not diagnostic, the use of contextual information depends on its perceived diagnosticity. Finally, when memory-based information is not accessible, contextual information is used even when its diagnosticity is questionable. The results of three experiments support this model. Theoretical implications and recommendations for questionnaire design are discussed. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.

AIDS and Me, Never the Twain Shall Meet: The Effects of Information Accessibility on Judgments of Risk and Advertising Effectiveness

The HIV virus is now an international killer, but individuals perceive that they are less likely to contract the virus than are others (the self-positivity bias). Three studies investigate the antecedents and consequences of the self-positivity bias in judgments of the risk of contracting AIDS. We show that the perceived similarity of another person to oneself and the ease with which related information can be retrieved from memory (the accessibility of information) moderate self-perceptions of risk in an absolute sense and reduce the self-positivity bias. We then demonstrate that increasing the accessibility of a cause of AIDS, in an advertisement propounding safe sex, increases perceptions of ones own risk of contracting AIDS, reduces the self-positivity bias, leads to more favorable attitudes and intentions toward practicing precautionary behaviors (e.g., using condoms, taking an HIV test), and also leads to deeper processing of AIDS educational material. Theoretical implications regarding the use of the accessibility of information as a cue and the self-positivity bias are discussed, and recommendations for social marketing communications are offered.

The Effects of Accessibility of Information in Memory on Judgments of Behavioral Frequencies

This article examines the process by which behavioral frequency judgments are generated in consumer surveys. The results from three experiments indicate that the regularity (periodicity of occurrences) and the similarity (idiosyncrasy of the content of occurrences) of a frequently occurring behavior determine ( a ) the accessibility of the requisite information in memory, and therefore the process by which the judgment is generated, and ( b ) the accuracy of the associated frequency report. Further, the use of heuristics such as rates of occurrence result in more accurate frequency judgments than the use of recall-and-count strategies based on episodic recall.

Ease-of-Retrieval as an Automatic Input in Judgments: A Mere-Accessibility Framework?

The ease-of-retrieval hypothesis suggests that people use the ease with which information comes to mind as a heuristic in forming judgments (Schwarz et al. 1991). We examine the automaticity of the use of ease-of-retrieval as an input in judgments. We demonstrate that the ease-of-retrieval is used unintentionally, outside of awareness, and effortlessly, along with other consciously applied inputs, to make related judgments. Once experienced, its impact follows through to judgments, even when it is discredited as a source of information. Results across four studies suggest that an automatic source of information (viz., the ease-of-retrieval) may merely have to be accessible to be used in a judgment. We propose a mereaccessibility framework as a variant of Feldman and Lynch’s (1988) accessibilitydiagnosticity framework to explain these results.

Getting Emotional About Health

The consequences of illness have two crucial types of stakes: for the self and for the family. Therefore, this research examines the effectiveness of health messages that present consequences for the self or for the family, focusing specifically on the dual role of emotions in serving these stakes as a provider of resources and information. The authors theorize that (1) the valence dimension of discrete emotions influences resources, thus fostering or hindering the processing of aversive health information, whereas (2) the self-/other-relatedness dimension of discrete emotions provides information that interacts with the focal referent in the message (self or family) to determine compatibility. In Experiments 1–3, the authors demonstrate that when people are primed with a positive emotion (e.g., happiness, peacefulness), the compatibility between the referent and the discrete emotion fosters the processing of health information. When the primed emotion is negative (e.g., sadness, agitation), however, compatibility hinders processing of the message. In Experiment 4, the authors track emotions before and after exposure to a health message to demonstrate that the observed effect occurs because of an increase in the negative emotional state in compatible situations when people process disease-related information. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for increasing the effectiveness of health-related messages.

When Internal Reference Prices and Price Expectations Diverge: The Role of Confidence

When do internal reference prices differ from articulated price expectations? The authors propose that the internal reference price depends not only on the magnitude of the expected price but also on the confidence associated with this expectation. Four experiments delineate the effects of price expectation and confidence on the internal reference price. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors manipulate repetition and examine the effects of repetition-induced confidence on price judgments. In Experiments 3 and 4, they manipulate confidence directly to investigate its effects on judgments. The results from all four experiments suggest that consumers with less confidence have higher internal reference prices than more confident consumers, even when they do not differ in their articulated price expectations. The authors discuss the implications of these results for pricing theory.

Judgments of Behavioral Frequencies: Memory Search and Retrieval Strategies

Surveys in marketing often employ questions that seek to determine the frequency with which respondents engage in different kinds of behavior. These behaviors range from very frequent ones (such as the number of times a day that one consumes coffee) to somewhat frequent ones (such as the number of times that one went shopping in the last month) to infrequent ones (such as the number of times that one has purchased a car in the last 5 years). A study by Blair and Burton (1987) indicated that the cognitive processes that respondents use vary depending on the relative frequency of the event. In other words, although it is easy to recall and count every instance for an infrequent behavior, it becomes more difficult to do so for a frequent behavior. Many researchers now maintain that in a survey situation in which respondents are asked a question relating to the frequency of a fairly frequent, nonsalient behavior, they do not do a straightforward recall and count of every occurrence of the target behavior. Instead, they provide an estimate based on various inference strategies (Blair & Burton, 1987; L. Ross, 1984; Schwarz, 1990a; Strube, 1987).