The Influence of Self-View on Context Effects: How Display Fixtures Can Affect Product Evaluations

Can the surface material of a display table prompt context effects on shoppers’ product evaluations? If so, how might the direction of such effects be influenced by people's use of different modes of cognition—namely, holistic versus analytic cognition? The authors theorize and find that people's use of holistic cognition, as prompted by an interdependent self-view, produces an assimilation effect. Product evaluations are assimilated with associations with the table surface. However, people who rely on analytic processing, as prompted by an independent self-view, elicit a contrast effect in which evaluations are negatively related to such associations.