Evaluating Ambiguous Offerings - HEC Paris - École des hautes études commerciales de Paris Access content directly
Preprints, Working Papers, ... Year : 2020

Evaluating Ambiguous Offerings

Abstract

This paper studies how audience members categorize and evaluate ambiguous offerings. Depending on whether audience members categorize ambiguous offerings based on prototypes or goals, they activate two distinct cognitive mechanisms and evaluate differently ambiguous offerings. We expect that when audiences engage in goal-based vs. prototype-based categorization, their evaluation of ambiguous products increases. We theorize that under goal-based categorization, the perceived utility of unclear attributes increases for audiences, which leads them to evaluate more positively ambiguous product offerings. We test and find support for these direct and mediated relationships through a series of lab, on-line and field experiments. Overall, this study offers important implications for research on product and market categories, optimal distinctiveness, and market agents’ cognitive ascription of value.

Dates and versions

hal-03501699 , version 1 (23-12-2021)

Identifiers

Cite

Romain Boulongne, Rodolphe Durand. Evaluating Ambiguous Offerings. 2020. ⟨hal-03501699⟩

Collections

HEC
11 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More