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Consumer knowledge is seldom complete or errorless. Therefore, the self-assessed validity of knowledge and consequent knowledge calibration (i.e., the correspondence between self-assessed and actual validity) is an important issue for the study of consumer decision making. In this article we describe methods and models used in calibration research. We then review a wide variety of empirical results indicating that high levels of calibration are achieved rarely, moderate levels that include some degree of systematic bias are the norm, and confidence and accuracy are sometimes completely uncorrelated. Finally, we examine the explanations of miscalibration and offer suggestions for future research. Consumers are overconfident—they think they know more than they actually do. Our simple goal is to evaluate this proposition. Ultimately, we conclude that overconfidence is indeed a robust phenomenon and can be adopted by researchers as a stylized fact about human cognition; however, there are critical qualifications and

The authors present the results of two studies that show how consumers ’ evaluations of an advertised product can be influenced by the compatibility or conflict between the regulatory goals (promotion or prevention) addressed by the product and prior advertising of related products. Participants across both studies were exposed sequentially to the advertising of two products (prime and target), and they demonstrated a regulatory goal fluency effect in their evaluations of the target brand. When the regulatory goal serviced by the target matched (conflicted with) the regulatory goal serviced by the prime, participants indicated higher (lower) purchase intent (Experiment 1) and more favorable evaluations of the target brand (Experiment 2). These effects were not accounted for by differences in participants ’ involvement or affective state across the conditions. Instead, mediation analyses show that participants ’ ease of processing the target advertisement underlies the effect of goal compatibility on brand evaluation.

Recent research has demonstrated that merely measuring an individual's intentions changes their subsequent behavior. Several different alternative explanations have been proposed to explain why this "mere-measurement effect" occurs. However, these explanations have not been tested to date. The purpose of this paper is to test several competing explanations for why measuring general intentions (e.g., How likely are you to buy a car?) changes specific behavior (e.g., which specific brand of car is purchased). The results of seven experiments provide a more clear understanding of the cognitive mechanism through which the mere-measurement effect operates. The results show that when asked to provide general intentions to select a product in a given category respondents are more likely to choose options toward which they hold positive and accessible attitudes, and are less likely to choose options for which they hold negative and accessible attitudes, compared to a control group of participa...

Prior research often emphasized a stimulus-based or bottom-up view of product category representations. In contrast, we emphasize a more purposeful, top-down perspective and examine categories that consumers might construct in the service of salient (i.e., highly accessible) goals. Specifically, we investigate how the point of view imposed by salient consumer goals might affect category representations assessed by participants ’ similarity judgments of food products. A key factor in our study is that we examine both individual and situational sources of variability in goal salience. In addition, we also vary the surface-level, visual resemblance of the stimulus pairs of foods used in the study. The results suggest that personal goals (e.g., health) and situational goals (e.g., convenience) act in conjunction and exert a systematic impact on category representations. Both types of goals, when salient, enhanced the perceived similarity of goal-appropriate products and reduced the similarity of product pairs when only one product was ideal for the particular goal. The similarity-enhancing effect was most pronounced when the surface resemblance between the products was low, and the similarity-diminishing effect was more apparent when surface resemblance was high. Implications are discussed for current theoretical assumptions regarding categorization in consumer research.

y be factored into the decision more heavily than is price. The execu- tive may choose to ride dow-ntown by taxi and then implement this decision by standing on line and taking a taxi to the hotel. To bring these sorts of decision situations into the laboratory, researchers commonly focused on the goal of obtaining money, which they assume is shared across people. In the prototypical task, subjects are given choice options that differ in probability and amount. The use of gambles enabled researchers to explore decision making under risk. Often, a number of different choices are made in a single experimental session, and the pattern of choices across sets is analyzed. For ample, people might be asked whether they prefer a 45% chance to win $200 or a 50% chance to win $150. Later in the same ses sion, they might be asked whether they prefer a 90% chance to win $200 or a 100% chance to win $150. At issue in studies like these is the consistency of people's choices. The anal- yses would in

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Recent research has demonstrated that merely measuring consumers' purchase intentions changes their subsequent purchase behavior. Several different alternative explanations have been proposed to explain why this "mere-measurement effect" occurs. However, these explanations have not been tested to date. The purpose of this paper is to test several competing explanations for why measuring intentions changes behavior. The results of seven experiments provide a more clear understanding of the cognitive mechanism through which the mere-measurement effect operates. We find that when asked to provide purchase intentions, consumers are more likely to choose brands for which they hold positive and accessible attitudes, and are less likely to choose brands for which they hold negative and accessible attitudes, compared to a control group of consumers who are not asked an intentions question. We argue that these results provide support for the hypothesis that the mere-measurement effect operates ...

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St. Louis, and Wharton for their helpful suggestions. The authors are especially grateful to John Lynch for his help in developing a behavioral underpinning for their model. David Bell, Pete Fader, and Bruce Hardie generously provided the data. The authors also thank three anonymous for their many suggestions. Wagner Kamakura provided numerous detailed and helpful suggestions.