Search

The duration of exposures to advertising is often brief. Then, consumers can only obtain “thin slices” of information from the ads, such as which product and brand are being promoted. This research is the first to examine the influence that such thin slices of information have on ad and brand evaluation. Two lab experiments and one large field experiment, with exposure durations ranging from very brief (100 msec.) to very long (30 seconds), provide support for the hypothesis that advertising evaluation critically depends on the duration of ad exposure and on how ads convey which product and brand they promote, but in unexpected ways. Our experiments show that upfront ads, which instantly convey what they promote, are evaluated positively after brief but also after longer exposure durations. Mystery ads, which suspend conveying what they promote, are evaluated negatively after brief but positively after longer exposure durations. False front ads, which initially convey another identity than what they promote, are evaluated positively after brief exposures but negatively after longer exposure durations. Bayesian mediation analysis demonstrates that the sheer “feeling of knowing what the ad promotes” accounts for these ad-type effects on evaluation. The findings demonstrate the importance of thin slices of information in ad and brand evaluation, and have implications for advertising research and management. They reveal the benefits of being upfront in ads when exposure durations are brief, which they increasingly are.

Three laboratory experiments explore how alternative brand name structures (i.e., family branded or subbranded) and varying degrees of category similarity (i.e., similar or dissimilar) influence extension evaluations and parent brand dilution. The results indicate that subbranded extensions (e.g., Quencher by Tropicana cola) evoke a slower, more thoughtful subtyping processing strategy than family branded extensions (e.g., Tropicana cola), which evoke a faster, category-based processing strategy. As a result, category similarity affects extension evaluations when the extension is family branded but not when it is subbranded. In addition, dilution effects are only evident when consumers have a negative experience with a similar family branded extension. Subbranding thus offers two key benefits to marketers: It both enhances extension evaluations and protects the parent brand from any unwanted negative feedback.

In juxtaposition to the common belief that marketing cues highlighting product effectiveness will generate positive influences on consumer demand, the authors argue that signaling effectiveness is a double-edged sword. While effectiveness cues may increase initial purchase, they can curb postpurchase consumption and potentially decrease long-term product sales. Four studies demonstrate that salient cues in advertising or packaging (e.g., pictures, brand names) can increase perceived product efficacy and lead to a lower usage amount on a single occasion. The authors show that the impact of effectiveness cues on product usage is driven by inference making and is moderated by cue salience and people's need for cognition. Furthermore, the authors find that promoting effectiveness with certain cues does not increase product choice yet reduces product usage. These results stress the importance of seeking salient cues that work to stimulate both choice and usage.

Consumers often like fluently processed stimuli. The authors find that one source of fluency for numerical stimuli is the generation of a number through common addition (e.g., 1 + 1 through 10 + 10) and common multiplication (2 × 2 through 10 × 10) problems (study 1). Common addition and multiplication problems (arithmetic), or their operands, can be used to prime a number and increase its fluency (study 3). The benefits of arithmetic and operand primes are limited to single primes (i.e., more primes are not necessarily better) (Study 5). Number fluency is relevant to creating numeric brand names (Study 2), enhancing the liking of numeric brand names through advertising (Study 4), and executing price promotions (Study 6).

In Internet paid search advertising, marketers pay for search engines to serve text advertisements in response to keyword searches that are generic (e.g., “hotels”) or branded (e.g., “Hilton Hotels”). Although standalone metrics usually show that generic keywords have higher apparent costs to the advertiser than branded keywords, generic search may create a spillover effect on subsequent branded search. Building on the Nerlove–Arrow advertising framework, the authors propose a dynamic linear model to capture the potential spillover from generic to branded paid search. In the model, generic search advertisements serve to expose users to information about the brand's ability to meet their needs, raising awareness that the brand is relevant to the search. In turn, this can induce additional future search activity for keywords that include the brand name. Using a Bayesian estimation approach, the authors apply the model to data from a paid search campaign for a major lodging chain. The results show that generic search activity positively affects future branded search activity through awareness of relevance. However, branded search does not affect generic search, demonstrating that the spillover is asymmetric. The findings have implications for understanding search behavior on the Internet and the management of paid search advertising.

This article proposes that compared with a promotion regulatory focus, a prevention focus increases sensitivity to the advertiser's manipulative intent. Specifically, when message cues make manipulative intent moderately salient, prevention-focused people are more likely to activate persuasion knowledge and give less favorable brand evaluations than promotion-focused people. When message cues make manipulative intent highly salient or when manipulative intent is not salient, brand evaluations do not differ across regulatory foci. In addition, externally priming suspicion of manipulative intent makes promotion-focused people react similarly to prevention-focused people, suggesting that regulatory focus affects vigilance against persuasion.

Can pleasant ambient scents enhance consumer memory for branded products? If so, why? The authors examine the effects of ambient scent on recall and recognition of brands in two studies. In the first (i.e., encoding) phase of each study, subjects are asked to evaluate familiar and unfamiliar brands while viewing digital photographs of products on a computer screen; stimulus viewing times are measured covertly on the computer. Ambient scent is manipulated in the experiment room through a diffuser. In the second (i.e., retrieval) phase, conducted 24-hours later, brand recall and recognition accuracy are assessed. In both studies, ambient scent improves both recall and recognition of familiar and unfamiliar brands. This pattern emerges whether or not the scent is congruent with the product category (Study 1), and the enhancement in brand memory is due to the presence of ambient scent during encoding rather than retrieval (Study 2). Although ambient scent apparently did not alter subjects' self-assessed mood or arousal levels, it increased their attention in terms of longer stimulus viewing times. Mediation analyses suggest that the attention mechanism most likely explains why ambient scent improves brand memory.

Although brand ratings capture the favorability of brand associations, they often do not enable marketing managers to disentangle brand-specific associations from other effects. In this article, the authors present a decompositional model for analyzing brand ratings that addresses this nagging problem and provide insights for understanding the sources of brand equity. Starting with consumers' perceived level of a brand on an attribute, the authors decompose the rating into two components: brand-specific associations and general brand impressions. Brand-specific associations refer to features, attributes, or benefits that consumers link to a brand and that differentiate it from the competition. General brand impressions refer to general impressions about the brand that are based on a more holistic view of the brand. In this article, the authors focus on two principal issues: (1) How can the sources of bias that may be present in brand ratings be disentangled? and (2) Do these putatively biasing effects, if present, have any managerial implications for brand equity? The authors demonstrate the properties and advantages of the model in the context of three empirical applications.

Spillover refers to the extent to which a message influences beliefs related to attributes that are not contained in the message. The authors find that when consumers are not familiar with a brand, negative information spills over to attributes that are associated with the target attribute but not mentioned in the message. However, positive information does not. When consumers like the brand, a spillover occurs for the positive information as well. When consumers are committed to the brand, the spillover of negative information is minimized, but positive information spills over more freely to other associated but unmentioned attributes.

Despite the importance of decisions regarding international brand names, research on brand naming has focused primarily on English name creation. The authors conceptualize the local brand-name creation process in a multilingual international market. The authors present a framework that incorporates (1) a linguistic analysis of three translation methods—phonetic (i.e., by sound), semantic (i.e., by meaning), and phonosemantic (i.e., by sound plus meaning)—and (2) a cognitive analysis focusing on the impact of primes and expectations on consumer name evaluations. Using dual English-and-Chinese brand names, the authors show that the effectiveness of the translation depends on the emphasis of the original English name (versus the Chinese name) and the method of translation used previously for brand names within the same category.

Consumers use brand names and product features to predict the performance of products. Various learning models offer hypotheses about the source of these predictive associations. Spreading-activation models hypothesize that cues acquire predictive value as a consequence of being present during the acquisition of product performance information. Least mean squares connectionist models hypothesize that any one cue acquires predictive value only to the extent that it can predict differences in performance that are not already predicted by other available cues. Five studies in the context of portfolio-branding strategies provide evidence supporting a least mean squares connectionist model. As predicted by this model, results show that subbranding and ingredient-branding strategies can protect brands from dilution in some situations but can promote dilution in other situations.

In this article, the authors examine new product extension strategies that are likely to be effective in building brand equity. The framework accounts for mixed findings in brand equity literature by identifying motivation as a factor that moderates the dilution and enhancement effects observed in prior research. The authors find that the typicality of the extension and consumers’ level of motivation determine the effect of extensions on family brand name. In high-motivation conditions, incongruent extensions are scrutinized in detail and lead to the modification of family brand evaluations, regardless of the typicality of the extensions. However, in low-motivation conditions, brand evaluations are more extreme in the context of high (versus low) typicality. The less typical extension is considered an exception, which reduces its impact on evaluations. Results also show that brand name dilution or enhancement can occur in response to congruent extensions. However, processes that underlie the effect of congruent information are somewhat different.

In this article, the author considers the effect of brand names on demand by examining the price ratios of used twin automobiles. Twins usually are made in the same plant and have essentially the same physical attributes but different brand names. If the models of a twin pair are perceived as perfect substitutes, their relative price should equal unity. Brand names could cause the demand for twin models to differ if consumers use the brand names to make inferences about unobservable quality. Consumers also might prefer one brand to another for prestige or status. The relative prices of most of the twin pairs in the sample differ from unity, which implies that consumers do not perceive the twin models to be perfect substitutes. Parent-brand quality and other brand factors are related to the relative prices of the twin pairs. The results suggest that consumers rely on information about the parent brand to make inferences about individual products that carry the parent name. The results have implications for firms’ branding policies.

The authors report two studies investigating the effectiveness of a composite brand in a brand extension context. In composite brand extension, a combination of two existing brand names in different positions as header and modifier is used as the brand name for a new product (e.g., Slim-Fast chocolate cakemix by Godiva). The results of both studies reveal that by combining two brands with complementary attribute levels, a composite brand extension appears to have a better attribute profile than a direct extension of the header brand (Study 1) and has a better attribute profile when it consists of two complementary brands than when it consists of two highly favorable but not complementary brands (Study 2). The improved attribute profile seems to enhance a composite's effectiveness in influencing consumer choice and preference (Study 2). In addition, the positions of the constituent brand names in the composite brand name are found to be important in the formation of the composite's attribute profile and its feedback effects on the constituent brands. A composite brand extension has different attribute profiles and feedback effects, depending on the positions of the constituent brand names.

Recalling brand names is an important aspect of consumer choice in many situations. The authors develop a general Markov model that relates probabilistic aspects of recall to consumer and marketing mix variables. Then they illustrate how parameters can be estimated from recall data for three special cases of the model: The first is a “baseline” version of the model that can be used to assess the extent to which categories of brands can be automatically included in or excluded from memory search; the second is a zero-order model that can be used to estimate the effects of brand variables and individual usage rates on recall latency; and the third is a first-order model that uses aggregate recall data to assess market structure. Finally, the authors demonstrate how the model can be used in numerical analyses to evaluate awareness-building strategies.

With three experiments, the authors examine the notion that foreign branding—the strategy of pronouncing or spelling a brand name in a foreign language—triggers cultural stereotypes and influences product perceptions and attitudes. Choosing French brands as one specific case, Experiment 1 shows that the French pronunciation of a brand name affects the perceived hedonism of the products, attitudes toward the brand, and attitudes toward the brand name. Experiment 2 shows that congruent country-of-origin information, added to French branding, does not result in more hedonic perceptions; incongruence, however, diminishes the effect. In Experiment 3, an actual product taste test is performed. Despite the presence of direct sensory experience, consumer perceptions of a product change as a result of French branding.

The authors consider the effects of three marketing communication activities on nonproduct based differentiation. Specifically, they examine whether advertising, sales force, and promotion activities increase a firm's ability to differentiate and thus shield itself from future price competition. They suggest that own-price elasticity represents a measure of differentiation and examine the effects of marketing communication activities on own-price elasticities for a large number of consumer (durable and nondurable) businesses. They make a series of predictions about future differentiation outcomes based on the likely uniqueness of the communication message. The obtained results are compatible with their basic premise that, by providing unique and positive messages, a firm can insulate itself from future price competition, as witnessed by less negative future price elasticities. Conversely, results indicate that nonunique messages can decrease future differentiation, for example, price promotions for firms that price above the industry average lead to more negative future price elasticities.

The encoding variability explanation for the superior memorability of varied ad executions over repeated same executions was tested in two experiments. Results show that attention and encoding variability contribute independently to brand name memory and that encoding variability effects are obtained even when attention differences are controlled.

In this article, the authors examine the circumstances in which brand names convey information about unobservable quality. They argue that a brand name can convey unobservable quality credibly when false claims will result in intolerable economic losses. These losses can occur for two reasons: (1) losses of reputation or sunk investments and (2) losses of future profits that occur whether or not the brand has a reputation. The authors test this assertion in the context of the emerging practice of brand alliances. Results from several studies are supportive of the premise and suggest that, when evaluating a product that has an important unobservable attribute, consumers’ quality perceptions are enhanced when a brand is allied with a second brand that is perceived to be vulnerable to consumer sanctions. The authors discuss the theoretical and substantive implications for the area of brand management.

The authors study the determinants of line extension success using data on 75 line extensions of 34 cigarette brands over a 20-year period to investigate the relative effects of brand, extension, and firm characteristics on the incremental market share of brand line extensions. The econometric model also captures the extent of cannibalization of parent brand sales that may have occurred due to the line extension's introduction. The authors also explore the role of a brand's symbolic value as a factor in line extension success. Results indicate that parent brand strength and its symbolic value, early entry timing, a firm's size, and distinctive marketing competencies, as well as the advertising support allocated to line extensions, contribute positively to the success of line extensions. Their findings suggest that, in this industry, cannibalization effects of line extension activity may have been limited and line extensions into earlier subcategories actually may have helped the parent brand. Even with cannibalization, the incremental sales generated by the extension seem to be reason enough to make a line extension strategy viable.

The authors report results from a controlled experiment designed to investigate the impact of a brand's price promotion frequency and the depth of promotional price discounts on the price consumers expect to pay for that brand. A key feature of the work is that expected prices elicited directly from respondents in the experiment are used in the analysis, as opposed to the latent or surrogate measures of expected prices used in previous studies. As hypothesized, both the promotion frequency and the depth of price discounts are found to have a significant impact on price expectations. Evidence also supports a region of relative price insensitivity around the expected price, such that only price changes outside that region have a significant impact on consumer brand choice. Further, the authors find that consumer expectations of both price and promotional activities should be considered in explaining consumer brand choice behavior. Specifically, the presence of a promotional deal when one is not expected or the absence of a promotional deal when one is expected may have a significant impact on consumer brand choice. Finally, as in the case of price expectations, consumer response to promotion expectations is found to be asymmetric in that losses loom larger than gains.

Early research on the effect of promotion suggested that a brand using that element of the marketing mix would be evaluated lower and therefore have a reduced repurchase probability. Though that hy...

The authors report a study of the effects of price, brand, and store information on buyers’ perceptions of product quality and value, as well as their willingness to buy. Hypotheses are derived from a conceptual model positing the effects of extrinsic cues (price, brand name, and store name) on buyers’ perceptions and purchase intentions. Moreover, the design of the experiment allows additional analyses on the relative differential effects of price, brand name, and store name on the three dependent variables. Results indicate that price had a positive effect on perceived quality, but a negative effect on perceived value and willingness to buy. Favorable brand and store information positively influenced perceptions of quality and value, and subjects’ willingness to buy. The major findings are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.

A consumer's prior evaluation of an advertised brand is hypothesized to moderate the effectiveness of humor in advertising. Further, cognitive responses are hypothesized as mediators of the impact of humorous ads on brand attitude. The results support the hypothesized moderator role of prior brand evaluation: when prior evaluation of the advertised brand is positive, a humorous ad is more effective than its nonhumorous counterpart in changing consumer attitudes and choice behavior. When consumers have a negative prior attitude, the opposite is true: a humorous ad is less effective in changing consumer attitudes and choice behavior than its nonhumorous counterpart. The results also support the conceptualization of cognitive responses as mediators of the impact of humorous advertisements on brand attitude.

The study suggests that the effect of repeated advertising exposures on brand evaluations is moderated by the ease with which the advertising message is processed. Increasing exposures enhanced the effectiveness of a difficult appeal, increased then decreased the effectiveness of a moderately difficult appeal, and decreased then increased the effectiveness of an easy appeal. These outcomes support the premise that message effectiveness can be affected by the time available for message processing and the time required for that task.

Fishbein's attitude theory posits that beliefs are the only mediators of attitude formation and change. The validity of this proposition for consumers’ beliefs about product attributes and brand attitudes was exmained in the context of an advertising effects study. To manipulate product attribute beliefs and to create settings in which other mediation processes might occur, the authors exposed subjects to simple advertisements that contained either a verbal claim or visual information. Level of repetition also was varied. As expected, product attribute beliefs mediated attitude formation. However, another variable, termed attitude toward the advertisement, also mediated brand attitudes and purchase intentions. The authors discuss alternative explanations for the results and offer suggestions for future research.

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of very high levels of print ad repetition on brand name recall. In experiment I, the wearout in recall observed in natural settings was replicated in the laboratory. Experiment II examined whether this wearout was attributable to subjects’ inattention to ads and reactance to substantial repetition levels. When these factors were controlled experimentally, no wearout was observed; the highest repetition level yielded greater or as much persistence in brand name recall as lower repetition levels. The implications of these data for marketing practice and theory are discussed.

The authors propose to modify the basic confirmation/disconfirmation paradigm in two ways. First, expectations are replaced with experience-based norms as the standard for comparison of a brand's performance. Second, a zone of indifference is postulated as a mediator between confirmation/disconfirmation and satisfaction. Implications for future research are also presented.

A field experiment with a factorial design showed that consumers developed preferences for three brands of a physically homogeneous product (beer), identical except for brand name and price. With price used as a cue to brand quality and time measured by total purchase trials, strength of brand loyalty could be explained by perceived quality and a time trend.

Consumers' perceptions of alternative brands in the marketplace depend upon the amount of available information. Past research in marketing on brand perceptions generally involved describing stimuli only by their brand names [4, 5, 7, 10]. In two studies where variations were tried, results were different. In the first, a study of self-concept and brand preference, subjects shown color photographs of automobiles did not respond differently in their similarities judgments from those given only brand names [6]. In the second, a study of price and product quality, the judgments of the group receiving a profile on two attributes, as well as brand names, yielded significantly different configurations from those of the group responding only to brand names. The difference was the higher weight assigned to quality dimensions by the former group [11]. These two results provide support for the contention that differences in the configurations are caused by differences in the kind of explicit stimulus information presented. There is no systematic research, however, to guide practitioners and researchers as to how stimuli ought to be presented (what information should be given to the subjects) and as to what particular differences would be caused by varied information. This study attempted to bridge this gap by considering two kinds of explicit information, semantic descriptions and attribute profiles of brands. This information was presented both in place of and in addition to brand names.

This study compares seven marketing research methods for selecting a brand name. All methods indicate an adequate, high test-retest reliability. Inter-method correlations indicate that six of the seven methods generate nearly identical results, affirming an assumption often made but seldom tested.

Although it is generally agreed that the price and perceived quality of a product are highly related, there is still a paucity of empirical evidence demonstrating the form of this relationship. Specifically, price is thought to serve as an indicant of quality whenever there is little previous experience with the product or potential risk or uncertainty involved in its use [4, 7, 8, 10]. Stafford and Enis [9, p. 456] adroitly summarize this area of research when they state: "It appears obvious to us that if price data provide the only clue to product quality, then perceived quality should be expected to vary directly with price." Recent studies, however, suggest this relationship might not be quite so direct. In a study using three brands of beer (physically identical except for price and brand name) McConnell [5] found a nonlinear price-perceived quality relationship, although its exact form was unspecified. Gabor and Granger [2, 3] had consumers state the highest and lowest prices at which they would consider purchasing certain inexpensive foods and nondurables (e.g., nylon stockings). They then determined sets of upper and lower price limits for each of the products and concluded that within these limits price may well serve as an indicant of quality, but above and below them, respectively, the product will be perceived as being too expensive or of questionable quality. Such results imply the priceperceived quality relationship may be direct or monotonic only within certain intervals, but perhaps nonlinear or even discontinuous outside of these intervals. Given this lack of evidence concerning the nature of the price-perceived quality relationship the purpose of this study was to experimentally investigate this relationship for a specific product in an attempt to document its underlying nature. Specifically, it was hypothesized that for a product about which there is a lack of information, (1) price would serve as a major determinant of quality perception, and (2) this price-perceived quality relationship would be nonlinear. METHODOLOGY Product

Attitude toward the ad (Aad) has been postulated to be a causal mediating variable in the process through which advertising influences brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Previous conceptual and empirical research on this topic has suggested four alternative models of the relationships between brand-related cognitive, affective, and conative responses and ad-related cognitive and affective responses. The authors describe a structural equations analysis of these four models, utilizing two data sets generated within a commercial pretest setting. The results suggest that a dual mediation hypothesis, which postulates that Aad influences brand attitude both directly and indirectly through its effect on brand cognitions, is superior to the other three models under the particular set of conditions in the pretest setting.

Past research has examined the effect of level of involvement (high vs. low) on subjects’ reactions to persuasive communications. The authors suggest that high involvement can be differentiated into two types (cognitive vs. affective). By manipulating involvement level and type (low involvement, cognitive involvement, affective involvement), they show that the three different forms of involvement have different effects on how brand attitudes are formed. They also examine how music, as a peripheral persuasion cue, affects the process of brand attitude formation. The results indicate that the effect of music on brand attitude depends on the type and level of involvement. Music had a facilitative effect on brand attitude for subjects in the low involvement condition and a distracting effect for those in the cognitive involvement condition; its effect for those in the affective involvement condition was not clear. Alternative explanations of these results are offered and implications for advertising research are discussed.

The authors examine the relationships among feelings generated by new television ads for unfamiliar products, judgments of the ads’ characteristics, brand attribute evaluations, attitude toward the ad, and attitude toward the brand in a simultaneous equation model. Feelings affect attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand directly and indirectly. The particular effects of three different dimensions of feelings—upbeat, warm, and negative—are identified. The results are robust to multiple viewings of the ad, different measurement delay periods, and the particular ad seen.

The authors investigate a model for using what is said in a television commercial to predict what viewers recall of it. The psycholinguistically based ad language model (ALM) was applied to analysis of the propositional structure of 19 commercial scripts and 941 associated viewer recall protocols. The protocols came from either day-after telephone interviews by market research agencies or immediate free recall after forced exposure. Stepwise regressions with ALM script measures as predictors accounted for significant portions of the variance in ALM measures of how many ideas viewers would generate when recalling, how much information about execution and product characteristics they would recall, and their use of brand name and descriptive words. ALM script measures also predicted the day-after recall scores available for 16 of the commercials. Linking of the propositional structures of commercials with their recall leads to an improved foundation for use of recall in the evaluation of advertising messages.

Market pioneers outsell later entrants in both consumer and industrial markets. Entry barriers arising from preemptive positioning and switching costs have been advanced to explain this market share difference, termed “pioneering advantage.” However, empirical studies show that pioneering advantages are present even in mature markets in which brands reposition and switching costs are minimal. In these cases, the authors argue that pioneering advantage can arise from the process by which consumers learn about brands and form their preferences. This process can produce a preference structure that favors the pioneer, making it difficult for later entrants to “compete away” the pioneer's large market share, even if brands can reposition and switching costs are minimal.

When consumers are exposed to pricing and promotional activity by frequently purchased packaged goods, they may develop expectations that are used as points of reference in evaluating future activity. The authors build a model to test for the presence of these reference effects on brand choice behavior. The approach differs from previous research in two ways: (1) the model includes reference effects of promotion in addition to reference effects of price and (2) a threshold model is introduced to capture the formation of the consumer's promotional reference point. The authors calibrate a model of brand choice using IRI scanner panel data on ground coffee. The findings suggest that promotional activity has significant reference effects on consumer response.

The authors integrate previous research that has investigated experimentally the influence of price, brand name, and/or store name on buyers’ evaluations of product quality. The meta-analysis suggests that, for consumer products, the relationships between price and perceived quality and between brand name and perceived quality are positive and statistically significant. However, the positive effect of store name on perceived quality is small and not statistically significant. Further, the type of experimental design and the strength of the price manipulation are shown to significantly influence the observed effect of price on perceived quality.

Disconfirmation models of customer satisfaction employing three alternative standards of performance were compared by using causal modeling. Pre- and post-measures were obtained from subjects in three different use situations. The disconfirmation paradigm is supported. The analysis suggests that best brand norm and product norm are additional standards used for evaluating focal brand performance.

This article reports a study of unaided brand recall by female household heads and examines some factors related to brand salience. Findings indicate that brand recall is a complex, dynamic process.

This article presents the results of an experimental study of the dynamics of attitude development toward a new brand. The role of consumer familiarity with a new brand name in evaluation of product characteristics is examined.

Both positions are based on the common assumption that purchasers have a tendency to transfer attitudes developed about one product to another product via the brand name. The present study was designed to evaluate that tendency. But before describing the study, let us briefly examine the psychological base of this tendency and formally state the tested hypothesis. The principle of generalization, developed in psychology, holds that people have a tendency to view individual items as being similar, disregarding points of character that would differentiate them. Generalization may occur at either the physical or semantic level. When a person uses physical generalization, he views two or more objects as similar because they possess certain common physical characteristics. When semantic generalization is used, the person views two or more objects as similar because they carry a common meaning, even though the objects themselves may have different physical characteristics.

The 88th Congress (1963-64) seriously considered legislative proposals for a national fair-trade law that would permit manufacturers of brand name products to set retail prices of their products. An examination of the voluminous testimony furnished by expert witnesses at Congressional hearings suggests that no one has assessed the impact of a national fair-trade law on the Consumer Price Index. The objective of this article is to make estimates, based on a variety of assumptions, of the effect that such a law might have on the CPI. In 1963 two bills were introduced concurrently in the House and Senate (H.R. 3669 and S. 779) under the euphemistic label of "quality stabilization." The same label had been attached to similar bills introduced