Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

consciously known (Monroe and Lee 1999). Previous research suggests that a buyer‘s directexperience with a product or service is more effective in establishing buyers‘ emotionalattachments to a brand and/or its products and services than advertising or other forms ofcommunications (Goering 1985; Wright and Lynch 1995). Moreover, affect and feelings areinformation (Zajonc 1980; Schwarz and Clore 1988) and influence the learning process. Buyersuse feelings in decision-making (Pham 1998; Slovic et al. 2007) In fact, affective reactions oftenoccur first automatically and guide a buyer‘s information processing (Zajonc 1980). Amidstvoluminous information, buyers rely on affect and emotion for quicker, easier, and more efficientways to navigate in a complex, uncertain and sometimes dangerous world (Epstein 1994). Inessence, quite often, if not usually, buyers decide, and then they rationalize their decisions.CUSTOMER EXPERIENCESBuyers form perceptions based on available information gained through experiences. We definecustomer experience as the customers‘ ―total take away impressions and feelings formed by theirencounters with products, brands, services and the atmospheric aspects of the encounters.‖ Theseencounters include direct (shopping, trial and use) as well as indirect (exposure to advertising andother marketing communications) experiences that affect perceptions of value, purchase and repurchaseintentions (Brakus, Schmitt, and Zarantonello 2009). The more engaged/involved acustomer is, the more intense the customer‘s experience. Strong engagement makes positive andnegative experiences more intense (Higgins and Scholer 2009).People‘s judgments are a weighted average of first impressions and their evaluations of thebenefits of the products and services under consideration (Anderson 1971). First impressionshave the largest weight in this averaging process (Adaval 2003). Behavioral researchers frommultiple perspectives agree that the initial response to any environment is affective (positive andnegative), and that the images marked by these affective feelings guide subsequent customerjudgments and decisions within that environment (Davidson 2012; Lehrer 2007; Machleit andEroglu 2000; Slovic et al. 2007).Buyers decide to purchase products based on perceived value gained versus perceived monetarysacrifices made (Monroe 2003). Pham (1998) found that buyers‘ affective responses to productscorrelated directly with their perceptions of the products‘ values. Nevertheless, the difficulty ofcognitively integrating positive information of product attributes and benefits with negativeinformation of monetary cost or price to determine the relative value of a particular alternativecan be overwhelming (Anderson 1971; Adaval 2003). These judgments involve both feelings andaffect influences (Slovic et al 2007). Further, purchase decisions are consciously or nonconsciouslyinfluenced by the marker signals coming from bio-regulatory processes, expressingthemselves in emotions and feelings (Bechara and Damasio 2005).TYPES OF INFORMATION AND DIMENSIONS OF KNOWLEDGEThe information setting influences the process of a buyer‘s information acquisition (learning).People can attain knowledge about products that enables them to deal with a relatively complexenvironment intentionally as well as without awareness (Reber 1989; Whittlesea and Wright1997; Xia and Monroe 2005). There are two distinct types of information for consumers toencode, store and eventually retrieve. Declarative information includes attributes and factswhereas experiential information includes all environmental cues and emotions involved inbuyers‘ learning and knowledge development. Knowledge is the dynamic accumulation ofpersonal assimilation and interpretation of data and contextual information acquired through