Learning by Analogy: Analogical Advertisements and Prior Knowledge in New Product Adoption

摘要

Introduction: Theories of analogical learning explain how knowledge is used to understand something novel by the mapping object attributes and attribute relations between familiar domain the corresponding target domain (Gentner, 1983, 1989). The consumer learning by analogy model proposed that analogical learning constitutes an effective learning scheme that assists consumers to learn new product knowledge as well as increase their product adoption. In addition to the primary base domain, knowledge from a supplementary domain supplements new product representation and affects consumer preference (Moreau, Lehmann & Markman, 2001). Expertise or prior knowledge in the new product domain is also considered to be positively related to the success of new product adoption (Rogers, 1995). Current study examines if new product adoption is affected by facilitating the analogical learning of new product knowledge for consumers (Gregan-Paxton & John, 1997). The effects of analogical learning in the supplementary domain as well as consumers' levels of prior knowledge (expertise) are the main interests in current study.