Egocentric-Categorization: Seeing Yourself in Your Possessions, and Your Possessions in Your Self

Interviene: Gita Johar, Columbia University

Organizzato da: Dipartimento di Marketing (registrazione stefania.gandolfi@unibocconi.it)

Abstract: Ample consumer research concludes that consumers judge a product more favorably once they own it. The present research demonstrates that ownership can also lead to lower product evaluations. Four experiments support a cognitive framework, Egocentric Categorization, that accounts for both increases and decreases in product judgment following ownership. The framework postulates that under some conditions, consumers classify possessions as belonging to the category “self.” Therefore, they intuitively include self-related information in the way they mentally represent possessions, and evaluate owned products by assimilating judgments of the product to their judgments of the self on specific traits. Non-owned products on the other hand are classified as external to the category “self.” Consequently, their mental representation excludes self-related information and their judgments are contrasted away from the very same self-judgments. This framework predicts, for example, that less innovative consumers may judge a product as less innovative when they feel ownership over it, but as more innovative when they do not. Theoretical as well as substantive implications of this view are discussed.