Averaging expectancies and perceptual experiences in the assessment of quality

This study examines whether people integrate expectancy information with pe rceptual experiences when evaluating the quality of consumer products. In p articular, we investigate the following three questions: (1) Are expectancy effects observed in the evaluation of consumer products? (2) Can these eff ects be viewed in cognitive processing terms? (3) Can a mathematical model based on the averaging of attribute information describe the effects? Parti cipants in two experiments blindly evaluated (with the product names remove d) consumer products from six sensory modalities: vision (computer printer output), tactile (paper towels), olfaction (men's cologne), taste (corn chi ps), auditory (audio cassette tapes), and tactile/medicinal (hand lotion). Participants in both experiments were asked to: (1) rate the overall qualit y of the product given arbitrary quality labels (High Quality, Medium Quali ty, or Low Quality); (2) rate the overall quality of the product without th e labels, and (3) estimate the scale values for the quality labels alone. G roup results revealed main effects of the quality labels in all product cat egories. The pattern of results could be described by an averaging model ba sed on Information Integration Theory. These results have implications for placebo effects in consumer behavior and decision making. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.