Attribute Conflict in Consumer Decision Making: The Role of Task Compatibility

Anish Nagpal and Parthasarathy Krishnamurthy

Journal of Consumer Research, 2008, vol. 34, issue 5, 696-705

Abstract: Past research holds that a decision between two unattractive alternatives is more difficult than one between two attractive alternatives. We argue that this conclusion may rest on the the task of "choosing" adopted in the past research. A task of choosing requires an attractiveness judgment that is compatible with attractive alternatives but incompatible with unattractive alternatives. We test this thesis by reversing the compatibility using a reject task that requires judgment of unattractiveness. Two studies find that compatibility between alternative valence and task influences decision time, decision difficulty, attribute recall, and effort, underscoring the role of the task in the study of attribute conflict. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/521903 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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:34:y:2008:i:5:p:696-705

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 ().