How Consumers Are Affected by the Framing of Attribute Information before and after Consuming the Product

Abstract

Consunners rated several qualitative attributes of ground beef that framed the beef as either "75 % lean " or "25 % fat. " The consumers ' evaluations were more favor-able toward ttie beef labeled "75 % lean " than that labeled "25 % fat. " More impor-tantly, ttie magnitude of this information framing effect lessened when consumers actually tasted the meat. We discuss these results in terms of an averaging model, which suggests that a diagnostic product experience dilutes the impact of infonna-tion framing. J udgment and decision making research identifiesvarious contexts or "framing " effects that have important implications for consumer behavior the-ory development and application. Our present re-search explores an information framing effect by which consumers ' product judgments vary as a func-tion ofthe verbal labels used to define specific product attributes (Johnson and Levin 1985; Levin et al. 1985). For example, the judged likelihood of purchas-ing ground beef was found to be higher when the ground beef was described (framed) in terms of its percent-lean rather than its percent-fat (Levin et al. 1985). We used a more general operational definition of framing than used in earlier works based on Kahne