The effects of brand name fluency, attitude, and attribute accessibility on constrained and stimulus-based brand choices, the moderating role of the level of motivation and opportunity

grantor: University of TorontoThis dissertation examines how fluency for brand names, attitude accessibility, and attribute accessibility influence brand choices that are made in different contexts. Further, the results of the dissertation demonstrate that the respective effects of these factors critically depend on the level of motivation and opportunity the consumer has when making the brand choice. Drawing on the implicit memory framework, the first study examines how exposures to brand names affect subsequent brand choices under different levels of motivation and opportunity conditions. The results show that the brand choice made under low motivation and opportunity condition are sensitive to perceptual fluency, and thus are affected by the modality of exposure. The processing mode (conceptual vs. perceptual) is found to exert no influence on brand choice. The second study extends the findings of the first study by incorporating attitude accessibility into the model of brand choice. This study finds that the attitude accessibility influences brand choices that are made under both low and high motivation and opportunity conditions, but that perceptual fluency influences brand choices made only under low motivation and opportunity condition. Finally, the results of the third study demonstrate that the stimulus-based choice is also subject to the influence of memory. Specifically, the third study shows that the stimulus-based choice is influenced by the accessibility of attribute in memory. Further, the results show that an unimportant attribute may exert disproportionate impact on the brand choice if that attribute is highly accessible in memory. The study identifies selective attention as the mechanism by which the unimportant attribute influences the brand choice.Ph.D