How the Opinions of Others Affect Memory for Consumption Experiences

Consumers rely on their memory for past consumption experiences when next purchasing in the product category, when advising other consumers, and when setting expectations for future consumption experiences. Although previously considered to be a permanent record of the experience, consumer memory has recently been demonstrated to change with exposure to post-consumption advertising. The results reported here show that postexperience word-of-mouth comments altered memory for the evaluation of the experience, particularly when the consumer could not recall the source of the comment. The altered memory mediated the relationship between the initial evaluation and purchase intention. Also, consumers that were more confident in their memory of the evaluation had a higher evaluation-purchase intent correlation.