ELABORATION ON EXPERIENCE - EFFECTS ON ATTRIBUTE IMPORTANCE

This article examines how elaborating on prior experiences influences attribute importance. The first experiment shows that elaboration on u sage experiences increases the importance of attributes related to pro duct consumption, whereas elaboration on purchase experiences increase s the importance of attributes related to the purchase transaction, su ch as price and brand name. The second experiment examines whether ela boration on prior experiences, through increased accessibility of purc hase criteria in memory, reduces a common context effect, Results show that subjects who elaborate on past experiences are less influenced b y framing in the external context (i.e., listing some features and not others in the brand descriptions), relative to subjects who do not el aborate. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.