Fr. Kardes et al., MODERATING EFFECTS OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ON THE PERCEIVED DIAGNOSTICITY OF BELIEFS DERIVED FROM IMPLICIT VERSUS EXPLICIT PRODUCT CLAIMS, Journal of business research, 29(3), 1994, pp. 219-224
An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of prior knowledge
on the perceived diagnosticity of beliefs derived from directly stated
versus implied product claims. Subjects were exposed to sets of argum
ents implying several conclusions about specific product benefits. The
se conclusions were either stated directly in the text (explicit concl
usions) or omitted (implicit conclusions). Degree of belief in the tar
get conclusions and the perceived diagnosticity of these beliefs was a
ssessed by computing Bayesian likelihood ratios on the basis of subjec
ts' component probability estimates. As predicted, low knowledge subje
cts perceived their beliefs to be more diagnostic when they were based
on explicit (versus implicit) conclusions. By contrast, high knowledg
e subjects perceived their beliefs as diagnostic across conditions. Im
plications of the results for understanding the role of consumer infer
ence processes in advertising are discussed.