La. Peracchio et Am. Tybout, THE MODERATING ROLE OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE IN SCHEMA-BASED PRODUCT EVALUATION, Journal of consumer research, 23(3), 1996, pp. 177-192
Recent evidence suggests that a new product is evaluated more favorabl
y when its attributes are moderately incongruent with an activated pro
duct category schema than when its attributes are either congruent or
extremely incongruent with the schema. We extend this finding by showi
ng that it obtains when consumers have limited knowledge about the pro
duct category. When consumers possess elaborate knowledge about the ca
tegory, their evaluations are unaffected by the level of congruity but
rather are influenced by their schema-based associations to specific
product attributes. These findings are discussed in terms of current t
heorizing related to schema congruity and schema-based inferencing.