Affective and cognitive responses to a product trial are examined in an experiment containing two cells representing two product types: hedonic and functional. The stimulus products were a computer game and grammar-checking software. Forty-two college students comprised the sample for the experiment. The specific affective responses studied are pleasure and arousal, and brand cognitions are represented as the expectancy value from brand attributes (the product of brand beliefs, belief confidence, and attribute evaluations, summed across the attributes ( )). The relative level and ⌺ b c e i i i influence of affective and cognitive responses to a product trial were shown to differ significantly, depending on whether the product was hedonic or functional in nature. Specifically, for the hedonic product, felt arousal during the trial was higher than for the functional product, and emotional responses were significant antecedents of subjects' evaluations of the trial experience. Brand cognitions, however, were not significantly related to trial evaluations for the hedonic product. In contrast, for the functional product, brand cognitions and pleasure were significant antecedents of trial evaluations, but arousal was not. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of considering both the cognitive

A major goal of this study is to develop and test a structural model of trial processing to help marketers and researchers better understand the dynamics of this important stage in the purchase process. No such model exists, even though prior research has demonstrated that product trial can be an important determinant of brand beliefs and attitudes. Accordingly, the authors develop a general model of how consumers process and respond to trial experiences. This trial model then is integrated with a well-known advertising model to trace how (1) consumers react when both types of information are available and (2) advertising achieves its influence on trial perceptions. The authors estimate these models for two products that vary significantly in the diagnosticity of the trial experience and discuss implications for marketing research and practice.

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Advertising message involvement (MI) has long been a topic of interest in the advertising literature. Its effects on consumers'responses toadvertisinghave been shown to be numerous and significant. This study investigates a theoretical and methodological issue regarding predispositional factors and the impact they have on experimenter-generated manipulations of advertising message involvement. Results of an empirical investigation indicate that subjects ' pre-exis t ing levels of product involvement and product knowledge are important determinants of advertising message involvement, even when there is an attempt to experimentally manipulate levels of theconstruct. Although the involvement manipulations used in this study were successful in creating significantly different high-and lowinvolvement groups, results show that the effects of enduring product class involvement and product knowledge on advertising message involvement could not be erased. Theseresults,and others repwted in the study, suppwt prior research in the mrketing literature that has wnceptualized advertising involvement as afundion of both enduring traits and situational states.