Memory-Based Inferences during Consumer Choice

Abstract

This study explores consumers' inference strategies in a mixed choice task involving memory, external information, and missing information on attribute values for some brands. Accessibility of relevant information was manipulated, and both instructed and uninstructed or natural inferences were studied. Instructed inferences by low accessibility subjects conformed more with prior overall evaluations of the brands, displaying evaluative consistency. Instructed inferences by high accessibility subjects tended to follow a correlational rule linking missing information to other attribute information in memory, displaying probabilistic consistency. Choices conformed to inferences, and both were more variable when inferences were uninstructed.