Advertising and the stability of consideration sets over multiple purchase occasions

Abstract

This paper focuses on the dynamics of consumers' consideration sets over a series of purchase occasions and suggests some new measures of composition and stability of the consideration set. The proposed measures are: the number of brands considered at least once, the standard deviation of consideration set frequencies and the average discordance in consideration set composition. We examine how this stability in consideration set composition is affected by information in advertising. Higher perceived dispersion of brand-utilities resulting from exposure to differentiating advertising is expected to lead to more stable consideration sets over occasions. These predictions were tested in a computer based longitudinal experiment in which subjects had multiple opportunities to consider and purchase previously unfamiliar brands of candy bars. Results on all the three measures showed that consideration set composition was more stable over choice occasions for subjects exposed to differentiating advertising compared to control group subjects who were not exposed to ads, and also compared to subjects exposed to reminder ads. Conceptual and managerial implications of the results are discussed.