Effects of Appeal Type and Involvement on Product Disconfirmation: A Cognitive Response Approach Through Product Trial

Research on consumer cognitive response has focused primarily on the issue of persuasiveness of advertising com munications. Involvement states have been frequently proposed as mediators of cognitive responses. This article proposes extending cognitive responses and their interaction with involvement to the measurement of disconfirmation resulting from a product trial experience which is designed to be inconsistent with prior expectations derived from adver tising exposure. Such expectations are manipulated by vary ing levels of exaggeration in one and two-sided advertisements. High and low involvement with the response task is also introduced, and hypotheses are presented as to the effects of involvement, exaggeration, and two-sided presentations on disconfirmation and cognitive responses.

The findings suggest that exaggeration increases discon firmation and counterargumentation, especially in high in volvement conditions, and that two-sided refutational ads tend to moderate these effects. More broadly, the article sug gests that examination of cognitive responses should be ex tended beyond evaluation of advertising stimuli and should be used to evaluate the post-trial experience.