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Prior research has established that categorization plays a central role in new product learning. Very little is known, however, about category-based learning under conditions of categorization ambiguity. Of particular interest is whether and under what circumstances consumers might employ a multiple-(vs. single-) category strategy to generate inferences about ambiguous products. In this research, we identified 2 factors--category familiarity and the nature of the category cue-that are responsible for determining whether inferences are based on a single category or multiple, competing categories. The results of 3 studies suggest that when an ambiguous product is described in terms of conflicting conceptual and perceptual category cues, a single category inference strategy is employed when the perceptually cued category is more familiar than the conceptually cued category. In particular, inferences are based largely on the perceptually cued category under these circumstances. However, when the perceptually cued category is less than or equal to the conceptually cued category in familiarity, a multiple category inference strategy is employed and inferences are based on both the perceptually and conceptually cued categories.

The ever-accelerating pace of technological change has heralded an increasing number of new product introductions involving products that defy classification within existing categories. With the advent of these so-called "really new products," new questions about the influence of prior knowledge on consumer learning emerge. Chief among these is whether and to what extent prior knowledge plays a role in the comprehension of such products. Applying analogical learning theory to address this question, this investigation presents evidence indicating that analogy provides an effective link to the structural knowledge needed for consumers to learn about truly novel innovations. Reflecting this, subjects who engaged in analogical processing of new product information were more focused in their processing than subjects who processed the same information in the absence of analogy. Moreover, there was evidence

The trend in recent consumer research has been to emphasize the similarities between analogy and categorization. In this investigation, we merge the literature on analogy, categorization, and structure mapping theory to reach a better understanding of their differences. In 3 experiments, we compare consumers’ responses to analogy and categorization cues and find that analogy places much greater constraints on knowledge transfer than categorization by focusing consumers on relational similarities. Illustrating this, the analogy group in Study 1 was just as likely as the categorization group to generate relational inferences, but much less likely to generate attribute inferences. Likewise, the results of Study 2 indicate that the analogy group restricted their processing of features lying outside the common relational system, leading to inferior recall relative to the categorization group. Building on these findings, Study 3 demonstrates that, under certain circumstances, analogy and categorization work together syn‐ergistically to enhance consumer memory.

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