When a Good Impression Goes Bad:The Effect of Goal Changes on Repeated Attitudes Enquires

Extended Abstract Past consumer research has shown consumption goals impact product information processing, weighting and retrieving, which results in variances in the reported attitudes (Huffman and Houston 1993; Markman and Brendle 2000). However, the extant research has only examined how goals impact an initial attitude (Garbarino and Johnson 2001; Huffman and Houston 1993). In reality, a consumer’s goal can change from time to time. It remains unclear whether attitudes formed under different consumption goals impact each other. For instance, when consumptions goals change, will the prior goal-driven evaluation influence the later evaluation? If yes, why and in which direction (i.e., assimilating or contrasting)? We answered the above two questions by relying on Selective Accessibility Model (SAM, Mussweiler 2003) proposed in social judgment literature. The model suggests that whether the evaluation target is judged as similar or dissimilar to the comparison standard will decide whether the contrast or assimilation effect will be resulted. If the target is judged as similar, the assimilation effect will be observed, but if the target is judged as dissimilar to the comparison standard, the contrasting effect will happen. Based on SAM, we argue that an initial positive (bad) attitude formed under a certain consumption goal can be used as a comparison standard, makes the later evaluation of the same object under a conflicting goal worse (better) off. The current paper suggests that consumers use the relationship between consumption goals as a way to judge similarity or dissimilarity between the current and prior evaluations, (not only judging the applicability of the stored attitudes as suggested in extant attitude literature). Such judgment can be made quite quickly and colors the new evaluating process. In particular, we predict when two conflicting consumption goals activated at different times, attitudes reported under the later consumption goal would be judged as dissimilar to the initial attitudes formed under the earlier consumption goal, resulting in contrast effect. Our prediction was supported with two lab experiments. Abstract Despite the prevalence of fashion in the consumer market, previous research on fashion has primarily focused on the characteristics, motivations and behaviors of fashion innovators/leaders (e.g., Cassill and Drake, 1987; Goldsmith Flynn and More, 1996; Goldsmith, Moore and Beaudoin, 1999). Therefore little is known about the meanings of fashion to the broader range of consumers and their perceptions of fashion. This research attempts to fill this void. 1982). The results provided evidence for discriminant validity. Study 5: Further scale validation-nomological validity . A sample of 243 non-student respondents was used to further validate the scale by focusing on the nomological validity of the scale. We developed our tests based on the established models of fashion clothing consumption (e.g. O’Cass 2004). Age and gender of consumers were included as control variables in our tests. Our test of antecedents revealed that materialism and involvement were positively related to CFO. Moreover, our tests of the consequences found that individuals who are high on CFO scale also had higher self-confidence, tended to spend more and made more impulse purchases. Our results also showed interesting differential effects of the CFO dimensions. While all three dimensions of CFO were positively correlated with impulse buying tendency, only brand focus was significantly correlated with level of spending, and only design focus was significantly correlated with self-confidence.This research offers both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, this study provides an important contribution to current fashion research by first attempting to focus on consumers’ in general, rather than the limited number of fashion innovators/leaders’ perceptions of fashion. CFO may fit into a broader theory of fashion and fashion consumption (Miller et al. 1993). As such, CFO should be useful in empirical studies of consumers’ purchasing and consumption patterns of fashion products. This study also offers many important implications to fashion retailers to better understand and segment their market. Abstract Information search allows consumers to learn about relevant product dimensions, compare alternative options, and ultimately select the product they prefer. Many factors contribute to consumers’ information search processes, including: uncertainty (Urbany et al., 1989), domain knowledge (Brucks, 1985; Ozanne et al., 1992), breadth of alternatives (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000), and the magnitude of perceived difference between choice options (Russo & Carlson, 2002). Oddly, little is known about how expectations influence search in situations where consumers know very little about the choice options.