SIMILARITY IN CONTEXT - COGNITIVE REPRESENTATION AND VIOLATION OF PREFERENCE AND PERCEPTUAL INVARIANCE IN CONSUMER CHOICE

A recent stream of research has demonstrated that the relative prefere nce ordering among any two alternatives is influenced by the context o r the set of alternatives under consideration. A parallel stream of re search has suggested that judgments of similarity or perceived distanc e also vary with the composition of the stimulus set. In this paper, w e suggest that context-induced violations of invariance in preference and in similarity judgments are based on changes in the underlying cog nitive representation. Using the case of attraction effect as our exam ple, we demonstrate experimentally that (i) similarity or the distance between two brands changes as a function of new brand introduction an d (ii) rather precise predictions can be made as to the pattern of cha nges in the distance between brands and changes in preference ordering . Furthermore, the effect of context on similarity judgment patterns a llows us to identify new effects on preference for previously untested location of new brands, providing additional support for the claim th at preference and similarity judgments involve common processes. (C) 1 996 Academic Press, Inc.