From Services to Product: Free-Riding on the Spillover Effects? A Study in the Telecommunication Context.

The current research examines spillover effects from services to product with branded element. Results from a study among 136 participants have shown that customers’ attitudes towards services of a brand influence their evaluations of a new product with the same brand. Contrary to the author’s expectations, the spillover is not sensitive to ambiguity, i.e. there is no differential effect when the information about the new product is clear or ambiguous. In addition, the effect of customers’ most recent encounter with the brand’s touch-point is evident, in which when this experience is incongruent with their existing perceptions, customers tend to engage in conscious and deliberate information processing, and are less vulnerable to the unconscious spillover process.