The effect of adding features on product attractiveness: the role of product perceived congruity


Autoria(s): De Angelis, Matteo
Contribuinte(s)

Marcati, Alberto

Data(s)

04/06/2008

Resumo

Technological progress has been enabling companies to add disparate features to their existing products. This research investigates the effect of adding more features on consumers’ evaluation of the product, by examining in particular the role of the congruity of the features added with the base product as a variable the moderates the effect of increasing the number of features. Grounding on schema-congruity theory, I propose that the cognitive elaboration associated with the product congruity of the features added explains consumers’ evaluation as the number of new features increases. In particular, it is shown that consumers perceive a benefit from increasing the number of features only when these features are congruent with the product. The underlying mechanisms that explains this finding predicts that when the number of incongruent features increases the cognitive resources necessary to elaborate such incongruities increase and consumers are not willing to spend such resources. However, I further show that when encouraged to consider the new features thoughtfully, consumers do seem able to infer value from increasing the number of moderately incongruent features. Nonetheless, this finding does not apply for those new features that are extremely incongruent with the product. Further evidence for consumers’ ability to resolve the moderate incongruity associated with adding more features is also shown, by studying the moderating role of temporal construal. I propose that consumers perceive an increase in product evaluation as the number of moderately incongruent features increases when consumers consider purchasing the product in the distant future, whereas such an increase is not predicted for the near future scenario. I verify these effect in three experimental studies. Theoretical and managerial implications, and possible avenues of future research are also suggested.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/1159/1/de_angelis_matteo_tesi.pdf.pdf

urn:nbn:it:unibo-1125

De Angelis, Matteo (2008) The effect of adding features on product attractiveness: the role of product perceived congruity, [Dissertation thesis], Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. Dottorato di ricerca in Direzione aziendale <http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/view/dottorati/DOT219/>, 20 Ciclo. DOI 10.6092/unibo/amsdottorato/1159.

Idioma(s)

en

Publicador

Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna

Relação

http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/1159/

Direitos

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Palavras-Chave #SECS-P/08 Economia e gestione delle imprese
Tipo

Tesi di dottorato

NonPeerReviewed