Examining the Instrumentality of Attitudes: The Interactive Effect of Social Context, Medium and Product Type on Product Thoughts and Evaluations

Previous theorizing has suggested that social situations such as group discussion foster social-expressive concerns, thereby increasing the saliency of a product's social attributes. The present research suggests, however, that the impact of group discussion on product thoughts and evaluations may involve a more complex process, depending upon the product under discussion and the medium of discussion. To assess this, participants evaluated an image-based and quality-based product while anticipating engaging in further product evaluation either publicly (in a group) or privately (in an essay), either on-line or off-line. Counterintuitively, a group discussion context caused a decrease overall in the amount of thinking about, seeking, and actual discussion of social product attributes when compared to those working privately throughout the experiment. Planned comparisons indicated these effects to be significant for image-based rather than quality-based products. The results also suggest that on-line contexts heighten concerns with products' inherent performance characteristics. These results have implications for understanding how situational factors influence attitude functions as well as which product attributes are discussed during focus group research, word-of-mouth communication and consumer socialization.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Schlosser, Ann Elizabeth

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shavitt, Sharon

• Mass Communications

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9812761

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82230