Cue Competition, Attention Shifting, and the Highlighting Effect

Consumers often learn about product attributes all competitors have in common and product attributes unique to each competitor. According to Attentional Theory, the associative strength between attributes and their brands is determined by the order of learning. Attentional Theory predicts that common attributes will be more strongly associated with earlier-learned brands, while unique attributes will be more strongly associated with later-learned brands. Thus, consumers will prefer an earlier-learned brand when common attributes offer a higher value than unique attributes do, but a later-learned brand when unique attributes offer a higher value than common attributes. We test these implications in three experiments.

Citation:

Marcus Cunha and Juliano Laran (2007) ,"Cue Competition, Attention Shifting, and the Highlighting Effect", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 34, eds. Gavan Fitzsimons and Vicki Morwitz, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 551-552.