The effects of product quality and the typicality of trade names on affective judgments and desire to purchase

Abstract

We examined the effects of central (product attributes) and peripheral (typicality of product name) information for products on product reliability, goodwill, and purchase desire. Products were categorized as being either highly-regarded or poorly-regarded in terms of motivation to obtain product information and evaluate. Thirty undergraduates participated in the experiment, consisting of a learning phase and an evaluation phase. The results indicate that both central and peripheral information facilitates the evaluation of products in both categories. Moreover, the results of path analysis, indicate that product attributes directly influence all measures, irrespective of category, while the typicality of a product's name directly affects only the level of reliability, implying that typicality indirectly affects attraction to and purchase desire for the product through product reliability. In the poorly-regarded category, the typicality of a product's name did not influence quality evaluations, although recall rates were higher for products with highly-typical names than for those with less-typical names in both categories.View full abstract