The role of taxonomic and goal‐derived product categorization in,within, and across category judgments

Consumers can face two types of judgment and choice situations: They may be considering products that are classified in a single product category, or products that may belong to several different product categories. This article compares these within‐ and across‐category judgments on the basis of the distinction between taxonomic and goal‐derived categorization. The first study examines how products that belong to taxonomic and goal‐derived categories are represented in memory. The findings support the view that taxonomic categories differ from goal‐derived categories in terms of the ease with which the features shared between members of the category are accessible and the type of features that are used to represent the members. In turn, these differences influence consumer beliefs, judgments, and choice sets when consumers make within‐ and across‐category product comparisons. A second study examines how consumers' familiarity with consumption situations influences the construction of choice sets. Results indicate that as familiarity with consumption situations increases, consumers construct more narrowly defined, within‐category choice sets, whereas in less‐familiar situations consumers construct broader, across‐category choice sets. The implication of these findings on marketing action is discussed. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Moderating Effect of Product Category Knowledge and Attribute Importance on the Attraction Effect

This paper explores the moderating effect of product category knowledge and attribute importance on the attraction effect. The results of our study point to several boundary conditions of the effect. For consumers who have a moderate level of product category knowledge, and for consumers who assign more importance to one product attribute over the other, the attraction effect was strongest. In contrast, the attraction effect was diminished, in some cases to insignificant levels, for consumers with a high or low level of product category knowledge, and for consumers who consider both product attributes about equally important.