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.