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The affect heuristic in early judgments of product innovations
Author(s) -
King Jesse,
Slovic Paul
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of consumer behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.811
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1479-1838
pISSN - 1472-0817
DOI - 10.1002/cb.1491
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , heuristic , product (mathematics) , perception , function (biology) , psychology , risk perception , social psychology , consumer research , marketing , cognitive psychology , computer science , business , artificial intelligence , geometry , mathematics , communication , neuroscience , evolutionary biology , biology
According to the affect heuristic, people often rely upon their overall affective impression of a target to form judgments of risk. However, innovation research has largely characterized risk perception as a function of what the consumer knows rather than how they feel. In three studies, this research investigates the use of the affect heuristic in consumer judgments of product innovations. The findings indicate that judgments of risks and benefits associated with product innovations are inversely related and affectively congruent with evaluations of those innovations. Additionally, more affectively extreme evaluations are associated with increasingly disparate judgments of risk and benefit. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of both consumers' evaluations of product innovations and the affect heuristic. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.