Marketing Seminar- Raj Raghunathan

Taking advantage of two themes to emerge from past research, namely, that decision-makers tend to evaluate stimuli (products, people, etc.) in a mood-congruent manner (Pham 1998; Schwarz and Clore 1983), and that people seek to behave in a justifiable, “rational” manner (Hsee et al. 2003), we show that people’s preferences—operationalized as attribute-importance ratings—are unstable. We document evidence that this phenomenon, which we term aesthetics-influenced revision of attribute-importance: a) is stronger in contexts in which basing one’s decisions on aesthetic features of choice-options is less (vs. more) justified, and b) occurs even when participants are alerted to differences in the aesthetic quality of choice-options. Our findings also indicate that aesthetics-induced revision in attribute-importance ratings is not cosmetic, but rather, reflects a relatively deep-seated change in preferences—and thus influences future decisions.

Face to face

Lifelong Learning