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found that consumers infer more
positive motives from a company's price increase if the company has
a strong reputation.87
The ad in Illustration 8-7 uses color to reinforce an interpretation that
consumers have
learned. What meanings are associated with the colors in Illustration
8-7?
Expectations Individuals' interpretations of stimuli tend to be
consistent with
their expectations, an effect referred to as the expectation bias. Most
consumers expect dark
brown pudding to taste like chocolate, not vanilla, because dark
pudding is generally chocolate
flavored and vanilla pudding is generally cream colored. In a taste
test, 100 percent of a sample
of college students accepted dark brown vanilla pudding as
chocolate.88 Thus, their expectations,
cued by color, led to an interpretation that was inconsistent with
objective reality.
Consumers' expectations are the result of learning and can be formed
very quickly, as the old
saying ―first impressions matter‖ suggests. Once established, these
expectations can wield
enormous influence89 and can be hard to change. Many consumers
expect, for example, that
well-known brands are higher quality. As a consequence, consumers
frequently evaluate the
performance of a well-known brand as higher than that of an identical
product with an unknown
brand name. Many consumers have also come to expect that brands
with some sort of in-store
signage are on sale. As a consequence, one study found that brands
with promotional signs on
them in retail stores are interpreted as having reduced prices even
though the signs don't indicate
a price reduction and the prices aren't actually reduced.90
ILLUSTRATION 8-8 Consumers are exposed to many more ads than