How non-consumption goals (elicited by competitive setting or social risk) and self-confidence influence the importance of trivial attributes in product evaluation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This research aims to provide new empirical evidence, showing that trivial attributes can exert a significant impact on product evaluation when they help to fulfill non-consumption goals (goal that goes beyond functional benefits). Design/methodology/approach The research presents two experimental studies that investigate the role of trivial product attributes in various non-consumption contexts. Findings Trivial attributes can have a significant impact on product evaluation when they help to fulfill non-consumption goals. First, in the non-competitive versus competitive choice settings, a trivial attribute becomes more important when it helps to make a choice (i.e. a non-consumption goal). Second, in the low versus high social risk settings, a trivial attribute becomes more important when it helps to reduce a social risk (i.e. a non-consumption goal). In addition, self-confidence is a moderator, which regulates consumers’ ability to rely on trivial attributes in making product choices. Research limitations/implications The social risk manipulations (high vs low) were operationalized by manipulating the impression motive related to social risk. The more important a goal is, the more risk consumers feel in decision making (Lazarus, 1991). Therefore, risk is a proxy of the goal strength or goal relevance. Future research is needed to examine goal strength’s sole influence on the perception of the trivial attribute. Practical implications From managerial perspective, trivial attributes can help companies to improve their sales. For example, a way to increase an attribute’s importance is to put the product in a competitive setting. Increasing a social risk further increases the influence of trivial attributes. When less confident consumers perceive the social risk is high, they prefer a brand with a trivial attribute. For consumers, the findings also suggest that consumers should not be tempted to consider trivial attributes in their purchase decisions. Reconsidering attributes and increasing self-confidence could help maintain focus on non-trivial attributes. Originality/value The study makes several contributions to theory and practice. This is the first study to systematically propose a framework of how trivial attributes’ role in product evaluation and choice change based on goals. The paper clarifies confusions about the definitions of trivial attributes and reconciles contradictory findings in literature. A trivial attribute can be instrumental in evaluation and choice when it helps to achieve a non-consumption goal. It is also the first study to introduce social risks into trivial attributes research in choices. The findings provide empirical evidence that social risks and self-confidence together drive consumers to prefer for trivial attribute.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".