| Abstract: | Consumers often give answers to survey questions about which they are uninformed. Although research has documented this phenomenon and examined the conditions under which it occurs, the current research project is the first to examine how survey researchers might reduce uninformed response bias through the use of additional questions added to surveys that measure knowledge of brands for which consumers might be uninformed. In the current study, adding brand knowledge questions pertaining to an unknown (fictitious) brand reduced the likelihood of respondents providing uninformed responses when later asked to evaluate that brand. However, the effects of asking for brand familiarity on uninformed response rates differed by consumers' level of product‐class familiarity and the relative placement of the brand knowledge and brand attitude questions on the survey. Brand knowledge questions can suggest the existence of brands, placing them within a knowledge schema, thus leading to more uninformed responses from consumers low in product‐class familiarity. These results, coupled with recent other research findings suggest that researchers must consider the effects of related knowledge on what have been previously considered completely uninformed responses. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
