The Mere Categorization Effect: How the Presence of Categories Increases Choosers' Perceptions of Assortment Variety and Outcome Satisfaction

Cassie Mogilner, Tamar Rudnick and Sheena S. Iyengar

Journal of Consumer Research: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 2008, vol. 35, issue 2, pages 202-215

Abstract: What is the effect of option categorization on choosers' satisfaction? A combination of field and laboratory experiments reveals that the mere presence of categories, irrespective of their content, positively influences the satisfaction of choosers who are unfamiliar with the choice domain. This "mere categorization effect" is driven by a greater number of categories signaling greater variety among the available options, which allows for a sense of self-determination from choosing. This effect, however, is attenuated for choosers who are familiar with the choice domain, who do not rely on the presence of categories to perceive the variety available. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Date: 2008

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/588698 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jconrs:v:35:y:2008:i:2:p:202-215

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JCR/order1.html

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly is edited by Dawn Iacobucci

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly from University of Chicago Press
Address: The University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005 Chicago, IL 60637
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().