USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications
The complexity of consumers' cognitive structures and its relevance to consumer behavior.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2004
ISSN
0148-2963
Abstract
Consumers make numerous product decisions every day. This decision-making process depends on the information processing style employed. A key factor here is the complexity of a consumer’s cognitive structures (i.e., the sophistication of the structures used to organize information). Although this construct, cognitive complexity, holds much promise for consumer behavior, several questions remain to be answered and were addressed by the present research. First, the results of the present research indicate that the Repertory Grid, developed in social interaction contexts, is a reliable instrument for measuring cognitive complexity in the consumer behavior domain. Second, the results further suggest the presence of a generalizable—as well as a context-specific—component of cognitive complexity. The generalizable component of cognitive complexity indicates that these knowledge structures are transferable across related product categories. As such, cognitive complexity is likely to impact consumer processing of product information and advertising messages.
Language
en_US
Publisher
Elsevier Science Inc.
Recommended Citation
Zinkhan, G. M., & Braunsberger, K. (2004). The complexity of consumers' cognitive structures and its relevance to consumer behavior. Journal of Business Research, 57(6), 575. doi:10.1016/S0148-2963(02)00396-X
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
Abstract only. Full-text article is available through licensed access provided by the publisher. Published in Journal of Business Research, 57(6), 575. doi:10.1016/S0148-2963(02)00396-X Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.