Autobiographical memory involves mentally reliving past episodes that are personally relevant. Psychology research shows that it has remarkable bearing on one's life, including the accomplishment of tasks, self-enhancement, self-preservation and attaining goals. Yet, the understanding of autobiographical memory in consumer behaviour research is much more limited. Accordingly, the present study evaluates the impact of two cognitive mechanisms resulting from personal past-usage experiences linked to the product category, which are likely to underpin consumers' retrieval of brands from memory and purchase intention. The two cognitive aspects are: the cued recollection of specific autobiographical memories; and the accessibility (in memory) of autobiographical episodes of consumption that form product category knowledge. The empirical results obtained across three online experiments suggest product category knowledge accessible in consumer memory has a greater effect on brand retrieval and purchase intention than the direct recollection of specific autobiographical memories cued by the product category. Perceived importance of choice moderates this effect, which primarily concerns purchase intention. In particular, consistent with prior research on activation confusion, product category knowledge reduces purchase intention, especially for highly familiar (or prototypical) brands. Accordingly, we outline implications for branded communications, and advertising pre- and post-testing.

中文翻译：

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自传记忆对品牌检索和购买意愿的影响

自传体记忆涉及在精神上重温过去与个人相关的情节。心理学研究表明，它对一个人的生活有着显着的影响，包括完成任务、自我提升、自我保护和实现目标。然而，消费者行为研究中对自传体记忆的理解要有限得多。因此，本研究评估了与产品类别相关的个人过去使用经验所产生的两种认知机制的影响，这些机制可能支持消费者从记忆和购买意图中提取品牌。两个认知方面是：特定自传性记忆的线索回忆；以及形成产品类别知识的自传消费情节的可访问性（在记忆中）。通过三个在线实验获得的实证结果表明，消费者记忆中可获得的产品类别知识对品牌检索和购买意愿的影响比产品类别提示的特定自传记忆的直接回忆更大。感知选择的重要性缓和了这种影响，这主要与购买意愿有关。特别是，与之前关于激活混淆、产品类别知识的研究一致降低购买意愿，尤其是对于高度熟悉（或原型）的品牌。因此，我们概述了对品牌传播和广告测试前和测试后的影响。