Differences in the relative influence of product attributes under alternative processing conditions: Attribute importance versus attribute ease of imagability

We present two experiments that test whether ease of imagability can shift the influence of a product attribute without affecting its assessed importance in the decision. Results of the experiments indicate that more easily imagined attributes may have a disproportionate influence when subjects use imagery in the evaluation, but not when they engage in more analytical processing. Experiments 1 and 2 differ in the manner in which method of evaluation (imagery based vs. nonimagery based) was manipulated. In Experiment 1, use of imagery was manipulated through explicit instructions to either engage in or refrain from using imagery, whereas use of imagery was manipulated in Experiment 2 by varying the overall value of the alternatives. Results of Experiment 2 indicate that subjects who were asked to evaluate alternatives that were described in generally positive terms used imagery in the evaluation, placing greater emphasis on the easily imagined attributes, whereas subjects who were asked to evaluate alternatives that were described in generally negative terms or mixed positive and negative terms did not use imagery, basing their evaluations on attribute importance. Our findings support the hypothesis that consumers may at times evaluate alternatives by using an imagery heuristic, which involves imagining the actual experience with an alternative and assessing the desirability of the alternative according to the affective response to this imagined experience.