Categorization flexibility and scheme incongruity effect on new product evaluations

Abstract

This study is designed to explore the effects of category based transfer and schema incongruity on the categorization and evaluation of new products. Employing the drink “cider” as the hypothetical new product to be introduced to Turkish market, the first part of the experiment investigated the effects of providing a category label to the categorization of cider. The subjects are shown advertisements to either activate soft drink category or alcoholic drink category schema. Although the hypothetical cider in our study contains three percent alcohol, the number of participants who categorized cider as a soft drink increased significantly after seeing the soft drink label. The same significant relationship is also observed for alcoholic drink label group. When evaluating the performance expectations from cider, the soft label group used information from both soft drink and alcoholic drink categories whereas the alcoholic label group employed information mainly from alcoholic drink category. The second part of the experiment investigated the effects of incongruent versus congruent information on attitude formation and purchase intention. Participants who are exposed to incongruent information revealed significantly lower attitude and purchase intention scores than participants exposed to congruent information. Incongruent information also diluted participants’ performance expectations. The findings were discussed in terms of category-based transfer and schema incongruity literature.