FIELD DEPENDENCY AND BRAND COGNITIVE STRUCTURES Sharon

The research reported here examines the impact of field dependency on the way people structure brand information in memory. The authors propose that an individual's level of field dependency is an important determinant of the way information is stored in one's mind. Specifically, the authors argue that field independents are more likely to extract and integrate episodic information to form overall brand beliefs. On the other hand, field dependents tend to store more detailed, episodic information in memory and are less likely to generalize information across product categories. The authors further propose that this effect is moderated by level of expertise and such differences have important implications for how individuals evaluate marketing communications. Results from five studies support their propositions. 4 Understanding how consumers represent and organize brand information in memory has been a topic of enduring interest in the marketing literature. The way information is structured in one's mind affects what information is retrieved, used, perceived and stored (Cowley and Mitchell 2003; Wyer and Srull 1989). As new brand information is acquired and integrated with existing knowledge in memory, individuals form brand cognitive structures in memory (Christensen and Olson 2002). These cognitive structures represent the interpreted meanings of brands and have important implications for many consumer behavior issues such as brand equity, brand extension evaluation, and brand personality (Keller 2003; Lawson 2002). Thus, it is important to gain a good understanding of how information is stored and used. Traditionally, it is assumed that people structure information in memory hierarchically (Cowley and Mitchell 2003). However, recent studies found that many factors (e.g., goals and expertise) may affect the way one structures information in memory. For instance, Huffman and Houston (1993) show that consumers tend to organize information learned around the goal(s) that drives the experiences. Luna and Peracchio (2002) found that language affects the linkages among concepts in memory. Cowley and Mitchell (2003) further show that provision of usage occasion information at encoding affects how information is structured subsequently. Other research also shows that environmental variables (e.g., socialization process) and cognitive abilities (John and Whitney 1986; Wyer and Srull 1989) are important variables to consider. Collectively, the above-cited research suggests that the way information is stored in memory is influenced by a number of individual and situational factors. However, despite extensive research on this topic, there has been minimal research on how processing styles may affect cognitive structures for brands. …