Consumers Learning fast from Mistakes

Posted by max On February - 24 - 2009

We all are consumers and purchase lots of things in our day to day life. Everyone has their particular likes and dislikes about different products but we do have some criteria for judging the products before we purchase them.

Sometimes a high price tag, a label, or an ingredient can lead us to believe that we’re purchasing a high-quality item. But what happens if the attribute that attracted us to the product is false or meaningless? And its being observed that consumer responses to “biasing cues,” features that consumers assume are related to the quality of the item.

“Often consumers’ beliefs about the relationship between an attribute and product quality are correct.” “For example, higher-priced products are often better quality products. However, in many other cases, those beliefs are incorrect. For example, many low-priced products are actually quite good and many high-priced products are actually quite bad. Some attributes are even just irrelevant to product quality or are completely meaningless. For example, putting silk in shampoo does not do anything for hair but consumers may nevertheless expect it to.”

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Past research has demonstrated that biasing cues can successfully deceive consumers into buying items. But the authors wanted to find out if the same consumers would be deceived a second time. Using laboratory experiments involving orange juice, polo shirts, and paper towels, the authors found that biased quality expectations did not carry over to a second purchase. In fact, participants learned from those initial judgment mistakes.

The message to marketers is that consumers are not so easily duped. “Marketers should think twice about trying to mislead consumers by putting high prices on low-quality products or by touting attributes that seem to signal quality but in reality are meaningless”. “Marketers using such attributes may succeed at getting consumers to try their products, but the misleading actions are likely to backfire at the time of repeat purchase.”