ScholarWorks@UNO

Priming Consumer Attitudes

Alternative energy vehicles are available to American consumers at a premium to conventional gasoline vehicles. Participants in the study were primed by high and low cost of gasoline to determine if it would affect their ranking of attributes pertaining to operating expenses and attitudes toward the Chevrolet Volt. The prime condition will be shown to survey participants and The EPA Fuel Economy disclosure to focus participants on the estimated MPG that the Chevy Volt can achieve. Then they will see a print advertisement for the Chevrolet Volt that shows its cost and fuel efficiency features. / We believed our participants would focus on the priming cues to make a decision. The elaboration likelihood model helped us formulate this assumption. Demographic questions were designed to segment our participants. Perception was measured by attributes The Consumer Reports Organization identified as most important. We examined our findings using ANOVA, analysis of variance, to determine the impact independent variables have on the dependent variables. Experiment participants show varying degrees of causal patterns that could be attributed to the prime. / Our data shows that priming has had a measurable effect on consumer perception. Some interesting data about consumer perceptions of vehicle attributes could be assumed from our study. Observations of patterns between commuting distance, income and environmental awareness gave us additional insight. A larger sample group would improve the results. More study is needed to better define the demographic correlations to clarify how priming influenced attitudes. /