The Fading of Optimism: Temporal Changes in Expectations About Product Performance

EXTENDED ABSTRACT - Product expectations refer to predictions about how good a product’s performance will be (Boulding, Kalra, Staelin, and Zeithaml 1993). Consider a consumer trying to choose a disposable camera from a set of competing alternatives. For the chosen camera, the consumer can have expectations about the quality of photographs. Moreover, these expectations can exist both before and after choice. The actual performance, in terms of photograph quality, will be revealed only after the consumer takes pictures and gets the film roll processed. In this paper, we try to understand whether expectations about product performance (e.g., about photograph quality) change over time, from the pre-choice stage to the post-choice stage, before actual product performance is revealed. This paper therefore adds to post-choice research like that on satisfaction (e.g., Oliver 1980) by studying how expectations might changer after choice, before performance is revealed.

Citation:

Ashwani Monga and Michael J. Houston (2005) ,"The Fading of Optimism: Temporal Changes in Expectations About Product Performance", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 32, eds. Geeta Menon and Akshay R. Rao, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 360-361.