UC Berkeley

Marketplaces are becoming increasingly dynamic and fast-changing. Cognition plays a central role in how consumers make judgments and decisions in such environments, particularly through processes such as knowledge and memory. However, existing theories of consumer cognition, while conceptually rich, are often insufficiently formalized to generate novel and falsifiable predictions. In this dissertation, I examine three interconnected questions: how brand meanings evolve over time, how similarity and categorization influence consumer spending, and how false memories affect brand judgments. Although these topics span different areas of consumer behavior, they are unified by a common focus on how consumers’ mental representations shape judgment and decision-making. Across these projects, I advance a cognitive perspective in consumer research by formalizing previously loosely specified theories—such as those concerning brand meaning and mental accounting—and deriving precise, testable predictions. In doing so, this dissertation contributes to a more rigorous and unified understanding of consumer cognition in dynamic environments.