The Effects of Consumer Prior Knowledge and Processing Strategies on Judgments

Four studies examine how consumers’ prior knowledge of a product category and the way they process product information affect evaluation. Consumers with extensive prior knowledge of a category evaluate the brand more favorably when the presentation of the product information prompts a sense of progress rather than facilitating a detailed assessment (Studies 1 and 2), as well as when the information presentation involves a high level of construal rather than a low level (Studies 3 and 4). Consumers with limited domain knowledge exhibit opposite outcomes. The subjective experience of processing fluency mediates these effects. The findings suggest that evaluations are more favorable when there is a fit between prior knowledge and message processing than when fit is absent.