Decoy effects and brands

Date
2006
Authors
Kim, J
Park, J
Ryu, G
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Association for Consumer Research
Abstract

The relative preference for a target product over a competitor can be increased by providing a third alternative (a decoy) that is clearly inferior to the target but is not necessarily inferior to the competitor. We investigated how these “decoy” effects are influenced by the presence or absence of brand name information and the level of consumer brand knowledge. A field experiment was conducted with three hundred and twenty married females. Results indicated that overall, inclusion of a decoy in the choice set significantly increased the relative preference for the target (i.e., a decoy effect). However, identifying alternatives with real brand names eliminated this effect when participants possessed an extensive amount of knowledge about the brands, but it did not when participants had relatively limited knowledge. These results were generally consistent with implications of the category-based processing view about brand name information.

Description
Keywords
Source
Advances in Consumer Research, vol.33(1), pp.683 - 687
DOI
Rights statement
Copyright © 2006 Association for Consumer Research (www.acrwebsite.org). All Rights Reserved. The definitive version was published in (see Citation). The original publication is available free of charge at (see Publisher’s Version). Special permission has been given to place this publication version of the work on an institutional repository for non commercial purposes only.