Premium
The cognitive organization of product information: Effects of attribute category set size on information recall
Author(s) -
Park JongWon,
Wyer Robert S.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of consumer psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.433
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1532-7663
pISSN - 1057-7408
DOI - 10.1016/s1057-7408(08)80066-6
Subject(s) - categorization , recall , set (abstract data type) , product (mathematics) , psychology , quality (philosophy) , cognition , representation (politics) , impression , impression formation , cognitive psychology , information processing , computer science , information retrieval , social psychology , artificial intelligence , perception , mathematics , social perception , world wide web , philosophy , geometry , epistemology , neuroscience , politics , political science , law , programming language
This research investigates the way product information is organized in memory. Two types of organization are postulated. In the first, consumers mentally categorize each piece of information in terms of the attribute it exemplifies. In the second, they determine the favorableness of each information item independently of the attribute to which it pertains and organize these items around a more general evaluative concept of the product. Subjects in three experiments read items of information about a stereo color television with instructions either to form an overall evaluation of it or to make more specific judgments of its sound quality and picture quality. Recall data suggested that subjects with an attributejudgment objective organized the information in memory according to the attribute to which it pertained. Subjects with an overall‐evaluation objective also formed attribute‐specific representations. In addition, however, they formed a more general, evaluation‐based representation of the product as a whole. These findings were generally consistent with the dual representation model of impression formation proposed by Wyer and Srull (1989). We discuss implications of these results for product impression formation and judgment.