The Effects of Consumers' Cognitive Elaboration for Market Boundary Expansions

The Applicability of Moderate Incongruity for the Product Extension

Abstract

This research focuses on the moderate incongruity which promotes the consumers' cognitive elaboration. The purpose is to investigate the applicability of moderate incongruity for the product extension. Then, the Hierarchical Bayes estimation with the MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) methods, which captures the consumers' cognitive elaboration for the product extension, was developed. The results suggest that (1) the moderate incongruity for the product extension is identified at the subordinate level on the hierarchical category structure and (2) the moderate incongruity product expands the market boundary on the structure of consumer preference.