Concepts that are initially formed of a stimulus

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1 Determinants of Product Evaluation: Effects of the Time Interval between Knowledge of a Product's Country of Origin and Information about Its Specific Attributes SUNG-TAI HONG ROBERT S. WYER, JR.* Concepts related to country of origin can affect interpretation of information about specific product attributes. However, these effects are likeiy to be pronounced oniy when country of origin is conveyed some time before attribute descriptions, aliowing a separate concept of the product to be formed on the basis of it. When country of origin and intrinsic attribute information were presented in the same experimental session, subjects perceived country of origin as simply another product attribute. When presented the day before, however, country of origin not only had a greater influence on product evaluations but affected the interpretation of attribute descriptions. Concepts that are initially formed of a stimulus person or object can influence responses to later information about this stimulus. For example, previously formed concepts ofthe stimulus can affect the interpretation of new information about it and, consequently, can affect judgments based on this information (Manis, Nelson, and Shedler 1988). These effects have been investigated primarily in the area of person-impression formation. However, an understanding of their influence on consumer behavior is also important. General concepts of a product that are formed on the basis ofthe initial information one receives about it can induce expectations that affect the processing of more specific attribute information that is conveyed later. Consequently, these prior concepts may influence the impact of attribute information on product evaluations and purchasing decisions. The present research investigated the nature of this influence and the conditions in which it occurs. Concepts of a stimulus that provide a basis for expectations are often based on knowledge of its mem- *Sung-Tai Hong is assistant professor. Department of Business Administration, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. Robert S. Wyer, Jr., is professor. Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of several anonymous reviewers, and thank the University of Illinois Social Cognition Group for many penetrating comments and suggestions concerning interpretation ofthe results. This study was supported in part by a grant from the University of Missouri at Columbia. bership in a more general class or category. In the case of persons, this category might be a stereotyped group or social role. In the case of consumer products, a general category is often activated by a brand name or, as in the research to be reported, a product's country of origin. Knowledge that a product was made in a country that is known for high- (or low-) quality merchandise may have a direct, informational influence on judgments of the product; that is, the country's reputation for producing good or inferior products in general may be used to predict the quality of the particular product being evaluated. In addition, an initial concept formed on the basis of a product's country of origin could influence the way that descriptions ofthe product's specific attributes are interpreted, causing these descriptions to have a different effect on judgments than they otherwise would. Despite considerable research on the effect of county of origin on product judgments (see Bilkey and Nes 1982; Erickson, Johansson, and Chao 1984; Johansson, Douglas, and Nonaka 1985), the cognitive mechanisms that underlie these two effects have not been isolated. Perhaps surprisingly, in one of the few studies to examine the cognitive processes that mediate the effects of country of origin on product evaluations. Hong and Wyer (1989) found little evidence that a product's country of origin influenced the way that other product information was interpreted. In this study, information about a product was presented under two different taskobjective conditions. When subjects' objective at the 277 I 1990 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH. Inc. Vol. 17 Dccemticr 1990 All rights reserved. OO93-53O1/91/I7O3.<XX)3$O2.OO

2 278 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEAROH time they received the information was simply to comprehend this information, knowledge ofthe product's country of origin stimulated subjects to think more carefully about the attribute descriptions that followed. As a result, these descriptions had greater influence on the evaluations that subjects were later (unexpectedly) asked to report. When subjects' initial objective was to evaluate the product, however, they paid attention to the attribute information regardless of whether they knew the product's place of origin. Furthermore, although the product's country of origin had a direct influence on product evaluations in this condition, there was no evidence that it affected the way that other product attribute information was interpreted it was treated simply as a feature of the product that combined additively with other features to influence product evaluations. As noted previously, there is evidence in other stimulus domains that category-based expectancies influence the interpretation of information (see Manis et al. 1988; Wyer and SruU 1989), and more general effects of category accessibility on the encoding of information into memory have been abundantly demonstrated (for reviews, see Bargh 1984; Higgins and King 1981; Wyer and SruU 1981, 1989). In light of this evidence, a question arises as to why these effects were not detected in Hong and Wyer's 1989 study. Existing research and theory do not provide a clear answer to this question. It seems likely, however, that for a product's country of origin to be used as the basis for a general concept of the product (and, therefore, to induce expectations), it must be thought about in isolation from other product information. Consequently, it may need to be conveyed in a way that separates it from the other attribute descriptions ofthe product, and sufficient time must elapse before receipt of the latter information for a general concept of the product to be formed on the basis of country-of-origin information alone. In the study by Hong and Wyer, the product's country of origin and descriptions ofthe product's judgment-relevant attributes were presented in the same experimental session. Under these conditions, a separate concept of the product might not have been formed on the basis ofthe product's country of origin, so its effect on the processing of other information was negligible. These considerations suggest the following hypotheses: When a product's country of origin is conveyed only a short time before the product's specific attributes are described, it will function as an attribute ofthe product, the implications of which will combine with those of other attributes to affect judgments. When country-of-origin information is separated temporally from attribute information, however, an initial concept of the product will be formed on the basis of the country of origin alone. As a result, the country of origin will have more influence on product judgments in its own right than if it were simply considered as one of several attributes. In addition, concepts based on the product's country of origin should affect the interpretation of the specific attribute descriptions that are presented later, and, consequently, they should affect the impact of these descriptions as well. The general implications of these hypotheses are somewhat provocative because one might expect a product's country of origin to have greater impact when it is conveyed a short time before other information and, therefore, is more salient at the time this information is used to make judgments. In contrast, the foregoing hypotheses suggest that the product's country of origin will actually have less influence in this condition. In evaluating this possibility, a distinction should be made between the effects of" time delay postulated here and the effects of temporal factors that have been identified in research on concept accessibility (for a review and theoretical analysis, see Wyer and Srull 1986, 1989). Srull and Wyer (1979), for example, found that the effect of priming a concept on the interpretation of information decreased as the time interval between concept activation and information presentation increased. In that study, however, the concepts in question were activated by a task that was ostensibly unrelated to the stimulus information that was presented later and, therefore, were unlikely to be called to mind spontaneously after a period of time had elapsed. In contrast, the initial concept of a product that is based on its country of origin is quite relevant to judgment when later product information is presented. Consequently, this concept is likely to be activated spontaneously by simply mentioning the product or by other features of the judgment task. Therefore, the effect of this concept is likely to persist, if not to increase, over time, as we hypothesize. Our hypotheses, of course, do not imply that the effects of a product's country of origin are unique to this characteristic. Country of origin is only one of several types of product information that could stimulate the formation of an initial concept of a product. Brand names, for example, might have similar effects. Initial information about a more specific product attribute could also conceivably lead to the formation of a general concept ofthe product that, once formed, could affect the processing of later attribute information. Thus, country of origin should be considered an exemplar of the sort of product-related information that can have the effects we postulate. Nonetheless, the general concern with country-of-origin effects in marketing research (cf. Bilkey and Nes 1982; Johansson et al. 1985) suggests that it is a particularly important characteristic to consider. Two problems arise in evaluating the preceding hypotheses. First, the indirect effects of country of origin on judgments that are mediated by its influence on the interpretation of the attribute information must be

3 DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCT EVALUATION 279 separated from its direct, informational effect on judgments. A solution to this problem is suggested by previous research on the effects of activated concepts on the interpretation of information (Massad, Hubbard, and Newtson 1979; Srull and Wyer 1980). This research shows that the interpretation of information is affected only by concepts that are activated at the time the information is first received. Once information has been received and encoded into memory in terms of one set of concepts, it is unlikely to be retrieved and reinterpreted in terms of other concepts that become accessible later. If this conclusion is generalizable, it implies that any effects of country of origin on the interpretation of the attribute information should be evident only when the country of origin is presented before the attribute descriptions are learned. In other words, any effect of country of origin on judgments that occurs when it is presented after the attribute descriptions must be due to its direct, informational influence on evaluations, independent of its impact on the interpretation of other information. By varying the order in which country of origin and attribute descriptions are conveyed, therefore, the direct and indirect effects of country of origin can be isolated.' Second, one must specify the effects that a product's country of origin is likely to have on the interpretation of the product's attributes, and how these effects will be reflected in judgments of the product. In the conditions of primary interest in our study, subjects received information that a product was made in a country that was known for either high- or low-quality merchandise. This information was followed (either immediately or one day later) by descriptions of specific attributes. Some of the descriptions were ambiguous; that is, they could be interpreted as either favorable or unfavorable. These descriptions should be interpreted by subjects as evaluatively similar to the concepts activated by the country of origin (see Higgins and King 1981), so the effect of these descriptions on judgments should be similar to the effect of the country of origin itself. The remaining attribute descriptions were evaluatively less ambiguous and varied over conditions. Specifically, they were moderately favorable in some cases and moderately unfavorable in others. Predicting the effects of country of origin on the interpretation of these attributes, however, involves somewhat different 'An analogous procedure could be used to evaluate the possibility that the attribute information, when presented first, activates concepts that affect the interpretation of the subsequent country-oforigin information. Although it is conceivable that information about a particular product's favorable or unfavorable attributes will affect beliefs about the general quality of products manufactured in the product's country of origin, this effect seems unlikely to be large when the reputation of the country involved is already established. In fact, there was no evidence of such an effect in the study to be reported. considerations. When the evaluative implications of the attribute descriptions are similar to those of concepts activated by the country of origin, they can be interpreted in terms of these concepts. Thus, the concepts should have assimilation effects in these instances. That is, the attribute descriptions should be interpreted as similar in favorableness to the activated concepts. When the attribute descriptions are evaluatively dissimilar to those of the concepts activated by the country of origin, however, they cannot be interpreted as exemplifying these concepts. In this case, the concepts may be used as standards of comparison in construing the implications of the attribute information (Herr, Sherman, and Fazio 1983). As a result, they may have contrast effects. That is, the attribute descriptions may be interpreted as less similar to the concepts than they otherwise would have been. (For evidence of both assimilation and contrast effects of activated concepts on the interpretation of this information, see Herr 1986; Manis et al )^ Note, however, that the assimilation and contrast effects described should lead the evaluative implications of the attribute descriptions to be interpreted as more extreme. To see this, suppose the product's country of origin is known for high-quality products. Then, moderately favorable (consistent) attribute descriptions should be interpreted as more favorable (assimilation), whereas moderately unfavorable (inconsistent) descriptions should be interpreted as more unfavorable (contrast). Alternatively, suppose the product's country of origin is known for low-quality merchandise. Then, favorable (inconsistent) attribute descriptions should also be seen as more favorable (contrast) and unfavorable (consistent) descriptions should, again, be seen as less favorable (assimilation). In both cases, therefore, the effects of concepts activated by the country of origin on the interpretation of the attribute information should be reflected in more extreme effects of the attribute information on judgments than would otherwise occur.^ ^These contrast effects, which theoretically occur at the time the attribute information is encoded into memory, should be distinguished from the contrast effects of context stimuli that are more generally obtained in research in social Judgment (cf. Ostrom and Upshaw 1968; for a review, see Wyer [1974]). These latter effects are typically attributable to the way subjects use the response scale they are given to report judgments and do not reflect an influence of context on the subjective interpretation of the information itself. 'The prediction of assimilation efltects assumes that the evaluative implications of concepts activated by the country of origin are more extreme than the implications that the attribute information would be perceived to have if considered out of context of these concepts. If the difference between the evaluative implications of the country of origin and those of the context-free interpretation of the attribute descriptions are similar, the assimilation effect should be minimal, and the effect predicted here would be primarily due to contrast. Averaged over favorable and unfavorable countries of origin, however, the predicted effects on judgments would nevertheless be similar to those we have described.

4 280 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH The research to be reported examined these possibilities. By varying the type of attribute information presented and whether it followed or preceded the country-of-origin information, we were able to evaluate both the direct effects of country of origin and its indirect influence on the interpretation of attribute descriptions. In addition, supplementary data were collected on (1) subjects' recall of the attribute descriptions and (2) their perceptions of the favorableness of each product attribute considered in isolation. The attribute ratings provided a more direct indication of the effects of country of origin on subjects' interpretation of the attribute descriptions. The recall data permitted us to evaluate alternative interpretations of the results, as will be noted subsequently. Overview METHOD Subjects received information about two products a personal computer (PC) and a video cassette recorder (VCR) with instructions to form an impression of each. The information about each product was presented on two sheets of paper. One sheet indicated that the product was made in a country known for either high- or low-quality products (along with a description of attributes that were unimportant for evaluating the product). The second sheet contained descriptions of (1) judgment-relevant attributes that were unambiguously favorable or unfavorable and (2) ambiguous attributes with unclear evaluative implications. Subjects received the country-of-origin information either before (country-first conditions) or after (country-last conditions) the descriptions of specific judgment-relevant attributes. Later, they judged the favorableness of the product, recalled the information they had received, and estimated the favorableness of each product attribute separately. The time delay between the two sets of information was manipulated. Specifically, the two sets of information described were presented either sequentially in the same experimental session (short-delay conditions) or in different sessions 24 hours apart (long-delay conditions). Finally, some subjects judged the product immediately after the second set of information was presented, whereas others did not make judgments until a day later. This last variable entered into few significant effects, as will be seen. Design and Subjects Each subject considered two products. One product's country of origin was known for manufacturing high-quality goods, and the other's country of origin had a reputation for low-quality products. The judgment-relevant attribute descriptions presented about the two products, however, were either favorable in both cases or unfavorable in both. Thus, the design of the experiment consisted of one within-subject variable (the favorableness of the country-of-origin information) and four between-subject variables: information delay (none vs. 1 day), judgment delay (none vs. 1 day), the order in which the country-of-origin and intrinsic attribute information was presented (country first vs. country last), and the implications of the attribute information (favorable vs. unfavorable). A total of 256 business students served as subjects. Sixteen subjects were run under each combination of the four between-subject variables described. These 16 subjects were divided into four subgroups of four subjects each. Each subgroup received different countryof-origin information about the two products they were asked to evaluate. This information varied in terms of the reputation and geographical location (Eastern vs. Western) of the countries of origin associated with each product. This was done in a Latin square design that permitted the reputation of the country of origin to be treated as a within-subjects variable, controlling for the geographical location of the country and the specific product with which it was associated."* The order of presenting information about the two products was counterbalanced over subjects within each subgroup. Stimulus Materials The products used, a PC and a VCR, were chosen because they are relatively familiar to college students, many of whom might be likely to have an interest in purchasing such products. Twenty-one attributes of each product were selected from a larger pool of items on the basis of pretesting. Of these, five items described the product favorably along each of five attribute dimensions (e.g., "This PC has ample memory capacity"), and five parallel items described the product unfavorably along the same dimensions (e.g., "Memory capacity may be limited for heavy users"). Five other ambiguous attribute descriptions could be interpreted as either favorable or unfavorable (e.g., "This PC has a 12-month limited warranty" could indicate that the warranty is either too short or long enough). Finally, six unimportant attributes (e.g., "The color of the PC we tested is light gray") were presented along with the country-of-origin information to decrease the salience of country of origin and to minimize subjects' 'Specifically, subgroup 1 received information about a PC in a Western country noted for high-quality products and about a VCR made in an Eastern country noted for low-quality products. Subgroup 2 received information about a PC from an Eastern country noted for high-quality products and about a VCR from a Western country noted for low-quality goods. Subgroups 3 and 4 were similar to subgroups 1 and 2, respectively, except that the products associated with each country were reversed. Thus, pooled over the four subgroups, the two products and the two geographical locations were represented the same number of times at each level of country favorableness.

5 DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCT EVALUATION 281 perceptions that the experimenter specifically wanted them to use this information. Differences in the evaluative implications of the attribute sets were confirmed on the basis of normative data obtained from business administration students comparable to those used in the main experiment. Specifically, the favorableness of the attribute descriptions, measured along a scale from -5 to +5, were 3.31, -2.40,.57, and 1.02 for favorable, unfavorable, ambiguous, and unimportant attributes, respectively. Country-of-Origin Information. Four countries were selected on the basis of pretest data concerning subjects' beliefs that the countries produced either high- or low-quality electronic products. Two Western and two Eastern countries were selected. One country in each geographic region was typically regarded as manufacturing high-quality products (West Germany and Japan), and one in each region had a reputation for low-quality products (Mexico and the Philippines). (Using two countries from different geographical areas at each level of favorableness helped to reduce the influence of idiosyncratic characteristics of countries that were irrelevant to the quality of the products associated with them.) The normative beliefs that the countries in each pair typically produced high-quality products, rated along a scale from 1 to 10, were 6.93 and 2.28, respectively.* Stimulus Lists. Several lists of information were constructed for each product. Two lists contained the five ambiguous attribute descriptions followed by eitherfivefavorable orfiveunfavorable descriptions. The other lists contained information about the product's country of origin along with the six unimportant attributes. To ensure that it would be noticed, the country of origin was indicated at the top of the page with the type of product and a fictitious brand name, then was repeated in the list of attributes itself (e.g., "This product was made in "). Procedure Subjects participated in groups of eight. They took part in either one, two, or three experimental sessions, depending on the delay conditions to be described. Subjects were told (1) that we were interested in the impressions people form of products on the basis of information about features, (2) that they would receive information about a PC and a VCR, (3) that the two products were real and would soon appear on the market, and (4) that the information they would receive was taken from articles about to appear in Consumer 'Because the normative attribute and country-of-origin ratings were along different scales, it is not possible to draw clear conclusions concerning the relative extremity of these ratings. Although this could potentially create ambiguities in the interpretation of our results (see n. 3), this was in fact not a problem, as we will see. Reports. Then, subjects were asked to imagine themselves actually being in the market to buy the products and to form as clear an impression of the products as possible based on the descriptions provided. With this preamble, each subject was given information about the two products. Subjects under country-first conditions received the two lists containing country-of-origin information (one list pertaining to the PC and the other to the VCR). Subjects under country-last conditions received two lists (one for each product) describing only product-specific attributes. Then, under short-delay conditions, subjects received the second list of information about each product immediately after the first list. In long-delay conditions, subjects read the first list of items about each product and then were told that people usually get information over a period of time and that to approximate more closely conditions outside the laboratory, additional information would be presented in a second experimental session scheduled for the following day. When these subjects returned 24 hours later, they received the second set of information. In addition to varying the time interval between the two sets of information, the time between presentation of the information and judgments was also manipulated. Specifically, subjects under immediate-judgment conditions completed the dependent measures immediately after receiving the second set of information. Subjects under delayed-judgment conditions were told that product ratings were more reliable when information about the products "had a chance to settle" and, therefore, a detailed questionnaire concerning the products would be deferred for 24 hours. In this later session, subjects completed the same dependent measures that were administered in the two immediatejudgment conditions. Dependent Variables Overall Product Evaluations. Two scales were used to assess subjects' overall evaluations of the products they considered. First, subjects evaluated the quality of each product along a scale from 5 (very poor) to +5 (very good). Second, they indicated the desirability of using the products along a scale from 5 (very unfavorable) to +5 (very favorable). Responses along these scales were highly correlated (r =.81). Consequently, each subject's responses along the two scales were averaged to provide a single index of the subject's overall product evaluation. Recall of Information. Subjects were told that for researchers to understand how consumers form impressions ofa product, it would be helpful to know how much information about the products they could recall. With this preamble, subjects were urged to write down as much of the original information as they could remember regardless of whether they had taken it into account in forming their impressions. Recalled items

6 282 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH TABLE 1 PRODUCT EVALUATIONS AS A FUNCTION OF EXPERIMENTAL VARIABLES Country-of-origin information Conveyed first Conveyed last Delay and attribute conditions Favorable reputation Unfavorable reputation Favorable reputation Unfavorable reputation Short delay between information sets: Favorable attributes Unfavorable attributes Long delay between information sets: Favorable attributes Unfavorable attributes were scored as correct if they conveyed the same idea as one of the items presented. However, responses that simply referred to the features without conveying the meaning (e.g., "the size of the PC was given") were not counted. Counted items were classified as countryof-origin, unambiguous, ambiguous, or unimportant information. Individual Attribute Ratings. After completing the recall task, subjects were given a list of statements pertaining to the attributes that were described as either unambiguously favorable or unambiguously unfavorable, and also the attributes whose descriptions were evaluatively ambiguous. Each statement was phrased so that agreement indicated either a favorable or an unfavorable opinion of the product's value along the dimension in question. For example, the original item, "It has a 12-month limited warranty," was rephrased to read, "The warranty is long enough." In each case, subjects reported their agreement with the statement along a scale from 5 (strongly disagree) to +5 (strongly agree). Ratings were coded so that more positive ratings indicated stronger beliefs that the product had a favorable value along the attribute dimension in question. RESULTS Preliminary analyses of each set of dependent variables were performed as a function of the favorableness of the attribute descriptions, the favorableness of the country of origin,* presentation order, the delay be- 'In the statistical analyses to be reported, the effect of country of origin was inferred from the interaction of the product being evaluated (PC vs. VCR) and afifth,between-subjects variable (PC made in favorable country and VCR made in unfavorable country vs. PC made in unfavorable country and VCR made in favorable country; see n. 2). For clarity of exposition, however, results will be reported as effects of country of origin rather than the interactive effects of these two counterbalancing variables. tween the two sets of information, and the delay between presentation of the last set of information and judgments. No effects of judgment delay were significant, indicating that the effects of other experimental manipulations on judgments persisted for at least 24 hours. For simplicity of exposition, data are pooled over levels of this variable in the analyses described subsequently. Product Evaluations Subject's overall product evaluations are shown as a function of experimental variables in Table 1. These evaluations were generally more positive when the attribute information was favorable (X = 1.75) than when it was unfavorable {X = -.74), (F( 1,224) = , p <.001), and were mor^ positive when the country of origin was favorable (X =.80) than when it was not {X =.21), (i;( 1,224) = 25.94, p <.001). More relevant to the issues of concern in the present study are the contingencies of these effects on the time interval between the two sets of information and presentation order. The effect of attribute information can be inferred from the difference between judgments made when the attribute descriptions were favorable and judgments made when they were unfavorable. Correspondingly, the effect of country of origin can be seen most easily from the difference between evaluations of the product when it was attributed to a favorable country and evaluations when it was attributed to an unfavorable one. These effects, shown in Table 2, will be discussed in turn. Effects of Attribute Information. The effect of attribute information on product evaluations was predicted to be greater when the product's country of origin is conveyed some time before rather than either immediately before or after the attribute information. This hypothesis is confirmed by an interaction of information delay, presentation order, and the favorableness of the attribute information (F( 1,224) = 4.62,

7 DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCT EVALUATION 283 TABLE 2 EFFECTS OF ATTRIBUTE INFORMATION AND COUNTRY OF ORIGIN ON PRODUCT EVALUATIONS TABLE 3 PROPORTION OF INFORMATION RECALLED AS A FUNCTION OF PRESENTATION ORDER AND INFORMATION DELAY Effects Effect of attribute information Effect of country of origin Presentation order and time interval between information sets Country of origin conveyed first Short delay Long delay Country of origin conveyed last Short delay Long delay Country-of-origin information Variables Conveyed first Conveyed last Country of origin (1 item): Short delay between information sets Long delay between information sets Unambiguous attributes (5 items): Short delay tjetween information sets Long delay between information sets p <.05). That is, the effect of the attribute information was substantially greater under country-first, long-delay conditions (X = 3.40) than under country-first, short-delay conditions {X = 2.27) or under countrylast conditions regardless of the time between the two sets of information (averaged over the two delay intervals, X = 2.15). Although the effect of delay under country-first conditions only approached significance (/7 <.10), a planned comparison of the effect under the country-first, long-delay conditions with its effect under the other three conditions combined was highly reliable (F( 1,224) = 9.07, /? <.01). Direct Informational Effects of Country of Origin. Our interpretation of the effects of attribute information assumes that subjects under country-first, longdelay conditions were more likely than subjects under other conditions to form a central concept of the product on the basis of its country of origin and to use this concept either to organize or to interpret the other information presented later. If this is so, the product's country of origin should also have a greater direct, informational influence on judgments under these conditions than if it were treated simply as one of several judgment-relevant pieces of information. This hypothesis is supported by an interaction of information delay, presentation order, and the favorableness of country of origin {F{ 1,224) = 4.41, /7 <.05). Data pertaining to this interaction, shown in the bottom half of Table 2, parallel the effects of the first two variables and the favorableness of the attribute information. That is, country of origin had greater effect when it was conveyed a day before the attribute information {X =.86) than when it was conveyed immediately beforehand {X =.21), (F( 1,224) = 3.88, p <.05). Under country-last conditions, however, country of origin actually had nonsignificantly less effect when conveyed a day after {X =.47) rather than immediately after the attribute information (X =.82), {p >.10). Although the reason for the latter reversal is unclear, it is nevertheless worth noting. It indicates that the temporal separation of the two types of information per se does not account for the greater influence of the country of origin under long-delay conditions. Recall of Information To assist in the interpretation of the judgment data, two sets of supplementary data were analyzed. First, it was desirable to determine whether the effects we observed were due to differences in the amount of judgment-relevant information that subjects could recall in the various conditions. Two of the four types of information presented the country of origin and the attribute descriptions with evaluative implications were of particular relevance to this question. The proportion of items recalled of each type was analyzed separately as a function of the two delay manipulations, presentation order, the favorableness of the country of origin, and the favorableness of the product-specific attribute information. Because effects involving the latter two variables were typically nonsignificant and of unclear theoretical relevance, they will be ignored. Country of Origin. The probability of recalling a product's country of origin is shown in Table 3 as a function of information delay and presentation order. This probability was slightly greater when country of origin was conveyed last (X =.653) than when it was conveyed first {X =.594). However, neither this nor any other differences in the recall of this information was significant {p >.10). Thus, the greater influence of country of origin on judgments under long-delay conditions did not occur because the country of origin was more memorable under these conditions.' 'The overall proportion of subjects who recalled the country of origin was not particularly high. A failure to recall it, however, does not in itself indicate that it had no impact on judgments or on the

8 284 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH Attribute Information. An alternative interpretation of the effect of country of origin on the influence of attribute information is that information is encoded selectively and organized around concepts activated by the product's country of origin and, therefore, is better retained in long-term memory. If this were the case, however, the attributes should be recalled better under country-first, long-delay conditions than under other combinations of information delay and presentation order. However, this difference was not apparent. As shown in Table 3, the proportion of favorable and unfavorable attribute descriptions that were recalled was not appreciably different under countryfirst, long-delay information conditions than under country-first, short-delay conditions or country-last, short-delay conditions; in each case, F < I. Attribute recall was low under country-last, long-delay conditions, but this is probably because the delay between presentation of the attributes and the recall task was at least 24 hours longer in this condition than in the other conditions. The overall analyses of these data (and also of data pertaining to the recall of ambiguous and unimportant attribute information) yielded several other significant effects that were attributable to differences in the time interval between presentation of the attribute information and the recall task. However, these results are not of theoretical interest and, therefore, are not reported. Interpretation of Individual Attributes According to our hypothesis, the effects of country of origin on the impact of attribute information are mediated by its influence on the interpretation of the individual attribute descriptions. These effects can be inferred from subjects' postevaluation ratings of the favorableness of the attributes to which these descriptions pertain. Two sets of attributes were of particular interest: those that were described either favorably or unfavorably, and those that were described in ways that were evaluatively ambiguous. Ratings of Favorably and Unfavorably Described Attributes. The effects of concepts activated by country of origin on the perceived implications of favorable and unfavorable attribute descriptions theoretically depend on whether these descriptions can potentially be interpreted as exemplifying these concepts. If feainterpretation of information. Several studies (cf. Wyer and Budesheim 1987; Wyer and Unverzagt 1985) provide evidence that information can actually have more impact on judgments when not recalled than when it can be remembered. Moreover, Lombardi, Higgins, and Bargh (1987) report that activated concepts are more likely to affect the interpretation of information when subjects cannot recall the stimuli than when they can. For a theoretical explication of these effects, see Wyer and Srull (1989). tures of an attribute description are consistent with those of an evaluative concept that is activated by the product's place of origin, they should be interpreted as exemplars of the concept, leading the attribute to be evaluated as more similar to the concept than it otherwise would be. However, if the description cannot be interpreted as an instance ofa concept activated by the place of origin, the concept may be used as a standard of comparison in assessing its implications, producing a contrast effect on evaluations of the attribute described (for a similar argument, see Herr et al. 1983). Consequently, if the implications of concepts associated with the country of origin are more extreme than implications of the attribute information when this information is considered out of context, activation of these concepts should lead subjects to interpret the favorable and unfavorable attribute descriptions as having more extreme implications than they would have otherwise. According to our hypothesis, these effects should be most apparent under country-first, long-delay conditions. Data bearing on this possibility are summarized in Table 4. Subjects obviously rated attributes more favorably if the descriptions of them were favorable (X = 2.60) than if they were unfavorable {X = -2.30), (F( 1,224) = , p <.01). However, the polarization of these ratings under a given information-presentation condition can be inferred from the difference between these two sets of ratings. This difference is tabulated in the bottom third of the table. As expected, the difference was greater when the country of origin was conveyed 24 hours before the attribute information (X = 5.65) than when it was conve^'ed either immediately before (X = 5.05) or after it {X = 4.45). This pattern of effects is confirmed by an interaction of information delay, presentation order, and the favorableness of the attribute information, and by a planned comparison of the effect of attribute favorableness under country-first, long-delay conditions with its effect under the other three conditions combined; in each case, F( 1,240) > 4.69, p <.05. A contingency in these effects should be noted. A scrutiny of the data indicates that the assimilation and contrast effects we observed were similar in magnitude regardless of the favorableness of the country of origin. However, they were restricted to conditions in which the attribute descriptions were unfavorable. This can be seen from the effect of delay under country-first conditions on ratings of each type of attribute separately. When the attribute descriptions were moderately unfavorable, they were judged more unfavorably under long-delay than under short-delay conditions, and this was true both when the country of origin was unfavorable (an assimilation effect) and when it was favorable (a contrast effect). However, when the attribute descriptions were moderately favorable, they were judged similarly under the two delay conditions regardless of whether the country of origin was favorable

9 DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCT EVALUATION 285 TABLE 4 FAVORABLENESS RATINGS OF FAVORABLE AND UNFAVORABLE ATTRIBUTES AS A FUNCTION OF PRESENTATION ORDER AND INFORMATION DELAY Country-of-origin infornnation TABLE 5 FAVORABLENESS RATINGS OF AMBIGUOUS ATTRIBUTES AS A FUNCTION OF PRESENTATION ORDER AND INFORMATION DELAY Country-of-origin information Variables Conveyed first Conveyed last Variables Conveyed first /conveyed last Ratings of favorably described attributes (A): Short delay between information sets: X Long delay t)etv\/een information sets: X Ratings of unfavorably described attributes (B): Short delay between information sets: X Long delay between information sets: X Extremity of ratings (Difference, A - B): Short delay tjetween information sets: X Long delay tsetween information sets: X or unfavorable. This contingency may simply indicate that the favorable attributes were not sufficiently ambiguous for their interpretation to be affected by the concepts activated by the county of origin. In any event, the contingency does not seriously compromise our interpretation of the results as a whole. Ratings of Ambiguously Described Attributes. Concepts activated by a product's country of origin should also influence the interpretation of descriptions that are ambiguous in their evaluative implications. These effects should differ from the effects on ratings of attributes that were clearly favorable or unfavorable and should be similar to those observed in research on concept accessibility and the interpretation of evaluatively ambiguous person information (Higgins and King 1981). More specifically, concepts activated by a product's country of origin should have a generally positive influence on the interpretation of these attribute descriptions and, therefore, on evaluations of the attributes being described. Short delay betvt/een information sets: Long delay between information sets: Data shown in Table 5 support this hypothesis. That is, country of origin had a positive effect on ratings of ambiguous attributes under precisely the same conditions in which it had assimilation and contrast effects on judgments of unambiguously described attributes (see Table 4). Specifically, when country of origin preceded the attribute information by 24 hours, ambiguous attributes were rated more favorably when the country of origin was favorable {X =.77) than when it was unfavorable (A" =.02). This difference was greater than the comparable difference when country of origin was conveyed either immediately before or after the attribute information. The interaction of country of origin, presentation order, and information delay was only marginally reliable (F( 1,224) = 3.81, p <.07. However, a planned contrast revealed that the effect of country of origin under country-first, delayedinformation conditions differed significantly from its effect under the other three conditions combined (f(l,224) = 6.36,p<.05). It might be noted that these results suggest an alternative interpretation of the effects of country of origin on product evaluations. That is, these effects could be due in part to the mediating influence of country of origin on the interpretation of the ambiguous attribute descriptions as well as to subjects' use of country of origin as a direct, informational basis for judgment. The relative contributions of these effects cannot be isolated in this study. It therefore seems most appropriate to conclude that country of origin did have a greater direct effect on judgments under country-first, long-delay conditions than under other conditions but that the mediating effect of country of origin on the interpretation of ambiguous attributes may have contributed to this difference as well. A second aspect of these data eliminates an alternative interpretation of the effects of information delay and presentation order on ratings of unambiguously described attributes. Because the attribute ratings were reported after the overall product evaluations, the

10 286 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH similar pattern of effects on each set of judgments could be attributed to a general halo effect of overall evaluations on component ratings (cf. Anderson and Lampel 1965). If this effect had occurred, however, it should also be reflected in subjects' ratings ofthe ambiguous attributes that accompanied the unambiguous ones. It was not. Ambiguously described attributes were judged more favorably when the unambiguous attribute information accompanying them was favorable {X =.96) than when it was unfavorable (X = -.11), (F( 1,224) = 59.78, p <.001). However, this difference did not depend significantly on either presentation order or delay conditions (p >.10). In other words, the interactive effects of presentation order, information delay, and the favorableness ofthe unambiguously described attributes, which were significant in analyses of both judgments of these attributes and product evaluations, were not evident when ambiguously described attributes were rated. DISCUSSION This study confirms earlier findings (Hong and Wyer 1989) that a product's country oforigin has an effect on product evaluations over and above the implications of information about the product's specific attributes. However, it goes substantially beyond the earlier research in identifying the conditions in which country of origin is likely to influence the way that other attribute-related information about a product is processed. In particular, both a product's country of origin and product-specific attribute information had greater influence on evaluations of the product when the country of origin was conveyed 24 hours before the attribute descriptions were provided than when it was conveyed either immediately before the attribute information or after it. These effects cannot be attributed simply to the temporal separation of the two types of information. That is, the time interval between the two sets of information had no influence on the impact of this information when attribute descriptions were presented first. The effects therefore appear to occur because, when subjects learned a product's country of origin an appreciable period of time before they received other information about it, they formed an initial evaluative concept of the product on the basis of its place oforigin alone. Once this concept was acquired, it not only was used as a basis for judgment in its own right but also influenced the processing of judgmentrelevant attribute information that subjects received later. The different effects of experimental manipulations on ratings of evaluatively ambiguous attributes and ratings of relatively unambiguous ones call several alternative interpretations of our results into question. For example, the effect of country oforigin on ratings of ambiguous attributes, which were reported after the products were evaluated, might be interpreted as a halo effect of overall evaluations of the product on judgments of its individual features. If this were so, however, the effects of experimental variables on individual attribute ratings should parallel their effects on overall product evaluations. Although this was true when the attributes were unfavorable, it was not true when they were favorable or ambiguous. In a similar vein, the effect of country oforigin on ratings of evaluatively ambiguous attributes might be attributable to a halo effect of the country of origin per se on evaluations of these attributes. If this were the case, however, country of origin would have had a similar effect on ratings ofthe less ambiguously described attributes. This was not the case. Thus, neither type of halo effect can account for both sets of results in combination. Two other possibilities should be considered. First, research in person-impression formation (for reviews, see Srull and Wyer 1989; Wyer and Srull 1989) suggest that once an initial evaluative concept of a stimulus has been formed, more specific information about the stimulus is sometimes organized around this concept and, therefore, is more easily recalled. Under conditions in which the country oforigin was conveyed first, concepts activated by it could have provided a basis for organizing the attribute information that was presented later, leading this information to be better remembered and, therefore, to have more influence on judgments for this reason. However, the memory data we obtained provide no evidence that the attribute descriptions were recalled any better under country-first than country-last conditions, regardless ofthe time interval between the two sets of information. This interpretation, therefore, does not seem tenable. A second consideration is more methodological in nature. The product's country oforigin was mentioned twice in the set of information in which it was embedded, and the attribute descriptions that accompanied it were generally unimportant for evaluating the product. It is conceivable that, when this information was separated from the other judgment-relevant information, the presentation procedure induced an experimental demand to treat the country of origin as important and, therefore, to base one's judgment on it. Alternatively, the separation of the two sets of information could have led subjects to believe that they were expected to treat each set of information as a separate unit and to weight the implications of each set equally. For either or both reasons, subjects might have given the country of origin greater weight in making judgments than they would if these demands had not existed. Two factors argue against this interpretation. First, if this interpretation were correct, the country oforigin should have had at least as much influence under longdelay conditions when it was presented last and, therefore, was particularly salient at the time the judgments

11 DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCT EVALUATION 287 were reported. This, however, was not the case. Second, the above interpretation assumes that the greater effect of both country of origin and attribute information is a result of the greater weight attached to this information in combining its implications to arrive at a judgment, independently of subjects' perception of these implications. Therefore, this interpretation cannot easily account for the effects of delay and order manipulations on ratings of the individual attributes, which were made after product evaluations were reported and should not be differentially affected by the weight attached to these attributes in the information integration process (Anderson 1981). As noted earlier, country of origin is only one of several types of product information that could potentially activate a general concept ofa product. Brand names and specific product attributes described under conditions that cause a general concept of the product to be formed could conceivably also affect the processing of other attribute information that is conveyed later and, therefore, could have much the same influence that country of origin had in the present study. The generalizability of our findings remains to be established. In any event, the evidence that categorical information about an object is likely to have greater influence on the processing of other information when it is conveyed separately from and some time before the other inf'ormation is of general importance in understanding category-based information processing. 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