CONSUMERS BELIEFS RESULTING FROM CONCEPTUAL COMBINATIONS - CONJUNCTIVE INFERENCES ABOUT BRAND EXTENSIONS

The nature of consumers' inferences about conceptual combinations is e xamined in this article. Specifically, brand extensions are posited as representing the unique combination of two knowledge categories or co ncepts-the brand and the new product class-and inferences about the co mbination as representing conjunctive inferences that consumers form o n line to comprehend the combination. Predictions of what consumers mi ght infer about brand extensions and of the possible sources of these inferences were tested in a concurrent verbalization study that utiliz ed an idiographic coding scheme. The study results indicate that consu mers frequently and spontaneously formed inferences when evaluating br and (extensions. Both the presence of attributes and the valences of a ttributes were inferred. Consumers appeared to construct these inferen ces on line rather than retrieving them from brand, product-class, sub category, superordinate category, or exemplar knowledge. As such, infe rences about conceptual combinations appear to be distinct from those previously found in the consumer inference literature. (C) 1996 John W iley & Sons, Inc.