Shall I Tell You Now or Later? Assimilation and Contrast in the Evaluation of Experiential Products

Keith Wilcox, Anne L. Roggeveen and Dhruv Grewal

Journal of Consumer Research, 2011, vol. 38, issue 4, 763 - 773

Abstract: This research demonstrates that the effect of product information on the evaluation of an experiential product depends on the order with which such information is presented. In a series of experiments, we find that when information is presented before consuming an experiential product, the information results in an assimilation effect such that consumers evaluate the same experience more positively when the product information is favorable compared to when it is unfavorable. More interestingly, we demonstrate that when such information is presented after consuming an experiential product, it results in a contrast effect such that consumers evaluate the same experience more negatively when the product information is favorable compared to when it is unfavorable. These findings have important implications for marketers in a host of experiential categories.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/660702 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/660702 (text/html)

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/660702

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().