A SPREADING ACTIVATION MODEL OF CONSUMERS' ASYMMETRIC SIMILARITY JUDGMENT

Advances in Consumer Research Volume19, 1992      Pages 782-786

A SPREADING ACTIVATION MODEL OF CONSUMERS' ASYMMETRIC SIMILARITY JUDGMENT

Ehsan Ulhaque, University of Texas at Arlington

Kenneth D. Bahn, University of Texas at Arlington

ABSTRACT -

Consumers often make asymmetric similarity judgments which are explainedvia Tversky's contrast model. This paper attempts to explain asymmetricsimilarity judgments by using the spreading activation models of semantic anddeclarative memory. It is proposed that the time taken for activation to spreadfrom one node to the next is related to, and gives rise to, asymmetricsimilarity judgment.

의미 기억과 기술적 기억의 활성화 확산 모델을 이용한 비대칭적 유사성 판단 설명.

INTRODUCTION

An essential component in the study of marketing and consumer behavior is that of consumer judgment and choice processes. Theses judgment and choice processes are based, to some extent, on cognitive representations -- consumers' internal memory structures -- as well as information which is acquired externally (Bettman 1979; Johnson and Puto 1987). While a plethora of research had been conducted on what, how and why of external information acquisition, research on cognitive representations of consumers has been rather limited (Gardner, Mitchell and Russo 1978; Johnson and Puto 1987). This state of affairs is rather sad as cognitive psychology provides a number of research streams and models in the area of cognitive representation (Anderson 1983; collins and Loftus 1975; Smith, Shoben and Rips 1974). This paper provides ans indirect testing of cognitive representation of brands in the tradition of Gardener, Mitchell and Russo (1978) and Meyers-Levy (1989).

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Specifically, a network model of declarative memory (Anderson 1983) is proposed. The nodes of this network are occupied by brands with their related network of attributes. When nodes are activated, activation spreads to all other nodes connected to the activated node (collins and Loftus 1975). The time taken for activation to spread from one node to another is hypothesized to be linked to similarity judgment. Asymmetric similarity judgment is proposed to be the result of differential time taken for the activation to spread from one node to another.

MODELS OF SEMANTIC MEMORY

Although various models of semantic memory have been proposed (e.g., Hierarchical Network model of Collins and Quillian 1969; Feature-Comparison model of Smith, Shoben Rips 1974; Spreading-Activation model 0f Collins and Loftus 1975) we will focus on spreading activation models. The reason being that the spreading activation, or network, models have better fared th scholarly scrutiny of various researchers (Chang 1986)

According to the spreading activation model of Collins and Loftus (976), the concepts (or brands in this case) are represented in memory as nodes, and relations between brands are represented as associated pathways between the nodes. There could be multiple paths of various strengths and lengths between brands. 두 node가 공유하는 속성 node가 많을 수록 두 node 간의 관계는 더 가까워지고 커진다. 두 활성화 확산이 교차하는 지점에서 의사 결정이 일어 난다(Collins and Loftus 1975).

Anderson (1983) has proposed a similar process in his ACT model of human memory. According to his model, brands or nodes have an activation value associated with them which reflect the current importance, relevance, or availability of the node in memory. the links between nodes have weights associated with them which are determined by the strength of associations between the connected nodes. For example, if coke is regarded as the most popular soft drink then the link associating node 'Coke' to node 'soft drink' will have more weight associated with it reflecting the strength the strength of association between the two nodes. On the other hand, if coke is not thought of as a food item then the weight of the link associating node 'Coke' to node 'food' will be relatively low, or there will be no such link. When a node is activated the spread of activation is modulated by the weights associated with each link, i.e., closely associated nodes produce higher activation transfer as compared to weakly associated nodes. Reder and Anderson (1980) found that the amount of activation spreading from a given node along a pathway is a function of the strength of that pathway relative to the sum of strengths of all paths emanating from that node.

Priming tasks have provided sufficient empirical support to network models of memory (Ashcraft 1989). In priming tasks a prime stimulus, which is presented first, influences some later process on a target stimulus which follows the prime. '닥터'로 점화 될 때 보다 '빵'으로 점화 될 때 '버터'에 대한 판단 속도가 더 빨랐다(Meyer and Schvaneveldt 1971). 빵은 버터와 관련이 있는 개념이기 때문에 빵으로 점화 되면 버터가 이미 활성화된 상태이기 때문에 닥터로 점화 되었을 때 보다 버터에 대한 반응이 더 빠르다.

Anderson의 모델에서 가장 중요한 것은 'Fan Effect' 이다. 가지고 있는 연결의 수가 많으면 활성화 확산되는 크기가 작아지는 효과. Meyers-Levy (1989a)에서 밝혀짐.

The concept of spreading activation has been used to explain mechanisms involved in such tasks as category exemplar production (Loftus 1973), semantic priming in lexical decisions (Neely 1977), episodic sentence and word recognition (Anderson 1983), and reading comprehension (Stanovich and West 1983).

CONTRAST MODEL OF SIMILARITY JUDGMENT

A SPREADING ACTIVATION MODEL OF ASYMMETRIC SIMILARITY JUDGMENT

CONCLUSIONS