Sampling Data for Covariation Assessment: The Effect of Prior Beliefs on Search Patterns

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of prior beliefs on consumers' information search strategies in estimating covariation relationships. Consumers were asked to sample four sets of products to determine whether price was related or unrelated to quality for each one. Those consumers who believed that price and quality are positively related elected to sample higher-priced products than consumers who believed that there is little relationship between price and quality. This effect was observed across products, sources of prior beliefs (own experience or experimenter-manipulated), and costs of search. High search costs, however, also affected the average price of products picked for the search task, the range of prices sampled (Study 1), and the number of products chosen to decide whether price and quality were related (Study 2). These findings are discussed in terms of the process of covariation judgment persistence and consumer information search.