To understand really new products, consumers face the challenge of construc
ting new knowledge structures rather simply changing existing ones. Recent
research in categorization suggests that one strategy for creating represen
tations for these new products is to use information already contained in f
amiliar product categories. While knowledge from multiple existing categori
es may be relevant, little research has examined how (and if) consumers pro
cess information drawn from more than one domain. We use two experiments to
demonstrate how consumers use cues from multiple categories to develop exp
ectations about and preferences for new products. Our findings suggest that
the first plausible category label provided to the consumer significantly
influences their categorizations, expectations, and preferences. Only when
advertisers place limits on the type of information to transfer from each e
xisting category can consumers use information from multiple categories eff
ectively.