A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsSensory stimuli are often ambiguous, which makes it difficult for consumers to encode and
retrieve them, and to construct their preferences. This project studies whether, in a prepurchase
context, consumption vocabulary can help consumers to perceive what products
are superior on haptic attributes. In an experiment with bed pillows, participants provided
with evaluative criteria preferred the pillow with superior haptic attributes more often and
to a larger extent than participants who had no evaluative criteria, which suggests the
provision of criteria has a positive influence on preference construction. Improvements in
memory for haptic attributes and disconnection from incongruent market information
derived from that provision were not confirmed
