Recall and Consumer Consideration Sets: Influencing Choice without Altering Brand Evaluations

Abstract

This article focuses on memory-based choice situations where changes in a brand's accessibility may affect the probability that it is retrieved and considered for choice. In such instances, factors other than evaluation may affect which brands are brought to mind at purchase. Two experiments are described that manipulate the determinants of brand accessibility and measure consequent effects on retrieval, consideration, choice, and evaluation. Results provide evidence for the influence of memory during the brand-choice process. For a brand to be selected in memory-based choice, the consumer must recall that brand and fail to recall other brands that might otherwise be preferred.