Persistent Preferences for Product Attributes: The Effects of the Initial Choice Context and Uninformative Experience

This research investigates the conditions under which persistent preferences for product attributes occur and the processes that lead to these effects. Our theoretical framework suggests that ambiguity in the context in which the initial choices are made determines the level of certainty in the initial preference. Certainty in the initial preference combines with uninformative additional experience to create a shift in the relevance of the attributes and biased information gathering in subsequent choices. These tendencies in turn lead to persistent preferences for the attributes of a previously chosen brand. In experiments 1A, 1B, and 1C, we varied the levels of ambiguity in the initial choice context and additional experience with a chosen brand and studied their effect on preference persistence. The findings offer support to the processes we propose. In experiment 2, we found that additional experience caused persistent preferences even for an irrelevant attribute as long as it was a differentiating attribute in the initial choice. Experiments 3 and 4 found that (a) the relative attractiveness of the chosen brand in the initial choice context and (b) a deliberation that compared the competing attributes in terms of their ability to render certain benefits attenuated the effects found in experiments 1A and 1B.