| Accumulating evidence suggests that consumer behaviors are often strongly influenced by subtle environmental cues rather than being based on conscious information processing. One of the ways in which the context affects consumer choices is through the activation of associations between features of the physical consumption environment and the brand. By pairing mature brands with novel situations, the present study explored the possibility to directly manipulate brand-context links by means of advertising. Results suggest that the associative treatments can significantly promote development of the novel brand-context association, even the two are initially perceived as incompatible and mismatched. |
