The influence of self-view on context effects: How display fixtures can affect product evaluations

Can the surface material of a display table prompt context effects on shoppers' product evaluations? If so, how might the direction of such effects be influenced by people's use of different modes of cognition -namely, holistic versus analytic cognition? The authors theorize and find that people's use of holistic cognition, as prompted by an interdependent self-view, produces an assimilation effect. Product evaluations are assimilated with associations with the table surface. However, people who rely on analytic processing, as prompted by an independent self-view, elicit a contrast effect in which evaluations are negatively related to such associations.