MEMORY AND DECISION MAKING

The focus in this chapter is on consumer memory and how it influences consumer choice. A small but growing literature exists on consumer memory, and the literature on consumer decision making is vast (see, e.g., reviews in this volume by Meyer and Kahn and by Bettman, Johnson, and Payne). Surprisingly, however, overlap between these two research streams has been minimal. Thus, our primary purpose in writing this chapter is to advocate an agenda for future investigations rather than to review a well-established body of consumer research, though, by necessity, we also partially accomplish the latter. Though speculative, we hope that what we have to say about the role of memory in consumer choice stimulates research that will eventually replace the present conjectures with more solid empirical evidence.