Consumption Vocabulary and Preference Formation

Consumers understanding of their own preferences can be aided by a con-sumption vocabulary-a taxonomy or framework that facilitates identifying the relation between a products features and ones evaluation of the product. In the absence of such a vocabulary, consumers understanding of their own prefer-ences will require more extensive experience and may never fully develop. The effect of such a vocabulary is tested in two experiments in which subjects pro-vided with a vocabulary (1) exhibit better-defined and more consistent preferences than control subjects, (2) show improved cue discovery, and (3) show learning (Le., increases in consistency over time). All results hold regardless of the func-tional form of the model used to assess subjects preference formation. The limits of our language means the lim-its of our world. (WITIGENSTEIN 1922, p. 149) Language provides a means, not only for representing experience, but also trans-forming it.... Once the child has suc-ceeded in internalizing language as a cogni-tive instrument, it becomes possible for him to represent and systematically transform the regularities of experience with far greater flexibility and power than before. (BRUNER 1964, p. 4) These observations touch on a topic of long-standing debate in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics-the relationship between language, thought, and reality. Whorf (1956), the most notable figure in this controversy, put forth the bold hypothesis that language causes thought. He argued that thought was controlled by not only the semantics (i.e., vocabulary) but also the syntactic construction of language. Our aims in this article, concep-tual and empirical, are more modest. Along the lines sug-Patricia M. West is assistant professor of marketing in the Depart-