A study about consumer inference can be of great interest to advertising managers. In certain cases it is needed to induce consumer's inference on missing information about product attributes to achieve higher consumer recall or persuasion. And, when there is advertising regulation forbidding direct comparison of competitive products, inducement of consumer inference may be necessary to highlight the competitive advantage of a product.
Previous studies about inference focused on when the inference occurs and by what factors it is affected. This study investigates the roles of inference prompts and cues on the inference process. How can we induce consumer inference effectively is the major interest of this study.
To clarify the effect of inference prompts, this study distinguishes the stage of inference and that of evaluation by inference. In addition to the effects of the inference prompts and cues, effect of involvement was also investigated.
The main results of this study are as follows : First, an inference prompt increases the occurrence of inference but, it reduces the effect of inference on evaluation. It was especially significant in purchasing situations than in preference formation situations. Second, an inference cue can facilitate the occurrence of inference. Third, in the low involvement situation, inference possibility alone has shown a main effect on the inference occurrence.
Explicit inference prompts must be carefully used, because in evaluating products, it can make consumer ignore the results of inference. And, because this effect is strong in purchasing situation, in such situation the firm is advised to give explicit information to consumers. Considering the effects of explicit prompts, it maybe more desirable to use cues to induce the consumer inference.
For low-involvement products, marketing managers must consider the possibility of consumer inference seriously, because for those products inference and evaluation by the inference can occur when it is possible even if it is not necessary. Thus, if marketing managers do not consider the possibility, such inference may harm the product evaluation or image.
