Nicole Votolato Montgomery

The Moderating Effect of Brand Commitment on the Evaluation of Competitive Brands

In this research, we examine whether brand commitment has a negative effect on competitor brands. We find that committed consumers systematically underrate competitive brands. We find that the process by which this negative evaluation of the competitor brand occurs depends on the extent to which counterarguments are generated about the competitor brand message. Therefore, by using argument strength (Study 1), the number of arguments (Study 2), and a combination of both of these factors (Study 3), we propose and test two advertising techniques that may help the competitor brand overcome these negative evaluations.

The Effect of Brand Commitment on the Evaluation of Nonpreferred Brands: A Disconfirmation Process

This research finds that high- and low-commitment consumers use different information-processing strategies when exposed to competitive brand information. High-commitment consumers use a disconfirmatory processing strategy, focusing on the dissimilarities between their preferred brand and the competitor brand. Low-commitment consumers focus on the similarities between the advertised brand and their preferred brand. These processing differences lead to differences in the evaluation of a competitive brand between high- and low-commitment consumers. However, priming high-commitment consumers to focus on the similarities and low-commitment consumers on the dissimilarities between their preferred brand and a competitor brand mitigates the effects of the different processing strategies. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

I Imagine, I Experience, I Like: The False Experience Effect

False memories refer to the mistaken belief that an event that did not occur did occur. Much of the research on false memories has focused on the antecedents to and the characteristics of such memories, with little focus on the consequences of false memories. In this research, we show that exposure to an imagery-evoking ad can result in an erroneous belief that an individual has experienced the advertised brand. We also demonstrate that such false experiential beliefs function akin to genuine product experience beliefs with regard to their consequences on product attitude strength, a finding we call the false experience effect. We further demonstrate two moderators of this effect-plausibility of past experience and evaluation timing.

The Social Context of Temporal Sequences: Why First Impressions Shape Shared Experiences

Many hedonic experiences consist of a temporal sequence of episodes, such as viewing a series of paintings in an art gallery. These events may be shared with others (joint context) or experienced alone (solo context). However, past research has mostly studied solo contexts, finding that consumers evaluate experiences with an improving trend more positively than those with a declining trend, due to a recency effect in memory-based evaluations. The present research investigates the moderating role of social context on global evaluations of experiences. Participants instructed to undergo hedonic experiences presented as an improving or declining trend replicated the greater evaluation of improving sequences in solo contexts, but demonstrated an attenuation of this preference in joint contexts. These differences occur because joint experiences trigger a more holistic (less analytic) processing style, contributing to primacy-based assimilation, in which evaluations of later episodes assimilate to first impressions (i.e., evaluations of the start).

Temporal sequence effects: a memory framework

While much attention has been given recently to studying temporal sequences of events, relatively less attention has been directed to understanding the mechanisms behind the formation of global retrospective evaluations of temporal sequences. The findings from this research suggest that a memory-based framework can provide a parsimonious, comprehensive explanation for retrospective evaluations. In addition to accounting for past findings such as a preference for improving over declining temporal sequences and the important role of peak (both high intensity and unique) experiences, we demonstrate that imposing a delay prior to retrospective evaluations can create a preference reversal due to the reduced accessibility of final or common instances. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Collective satiation: How coexperience accelerates a decline in hedonic judgments.

Individuals often mutually experience a stimulus with a relationship partner or social group (e.g., snacking with friends). Yet, little is currently understood about how a sense of coexperiencing affects hedonic judgments of experiences that unfold over time. Research on the shared attention state has suggested that hedonic judgments are intensified when individuals coexperience a stimulus (vs. experiencing it alone), and other related work has found that the social environment influences hedonic judgments in shared (vs. solo) experiences. Although this past work has focused on judgments of single instances of a stimulus, the present work examines how coexperience affects hedonic judgments of stimuli over time. This work documents the ‘collective satiation effect’ wherein satiation—a diminished enjoyment of pleasant stimuli with repeated experience—is accelerated by a sense of coexperiencing the stimulus with others. We propose that this happens because shared attention makes the repetitive nature of the experience more salient, by promoting and incorporating thoughts of others also repeatedly having the same shared experience. Five studies document the collective satiation effect, support the proposed mechanism, and show moderators of the effect. Taken together, this research contributes to an understanding of how the social environment influences the experience of hedonic stimuli, which has broad implications for the value individuals place on the time that they spend with others.

Motivated Reconstruction: The Effect of Brand Commitment on False Memories.

Across 5 studies, we examine the effect of prior brand commitment on the creation of false memories about product experience after reading online product reviews. We find that brand commitment and the valence of reviews to which consumers are exposed, interact to affect the incidence of false memories. Thus, highly committed consumers are more susceptible to the creation of false experience memories on exposure to positive versus negative reviews, whereas low commitment consumers exhibit similar levels of false memories in response to both positive and negative reviews. Further, these differences across brand commitment are attenuated when respondents are primed with an accuracy motivation, suggesting that the biasing effects of commitment are likely because of the motivation to defend the committed brand. Finally, we find that differences in false memories subsequently lead to differences in intentions to spread word-of-mouth (e.g., recommend the product to friends), suggesting that the consequences of false product experience memories can be significant for marketers and consumers. Our findings contribute to the literatures in false memory and marketing by documenting a motivated bias in false memories because of brand commitment.