461  2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. ● Vol. 33 ● March 2007 All rights reserved. 0093-5301/2007/3304-0004$10.00 Feeling and Thinking in Memory-Based versus Stimulus-Based Choices YUVAL ROTTENSTREICH SANJAY SOOD LYLE BRENNER* We contrast memory-based and stimulus-based choices, using dual-process the- ories such as Kahneman and Frederick’s system 1/system 2 dichotomy. Systems 1 and 2 are conceptualized as distinct modes of thought, the former automatic and affective, the latter controlled and deliberate. Cognitive load impedes system 2, yielding greater reliance on system 1. In memory-based choice, consumers must maintain relevant options in working memory. Thus, memory-based choices are associated with greater cognitive load than stimulus-based choices. Indeed, we find that memory-based choices favor immediately compelling, affect-rich system 1 options, whereas stimulus-based choices favor affect-poor options whose at- tractiveness emerges from deliberative system 2 thought. C onsider a consumer who is perusing the frozen desserts stocked at a local grocery store, intending to purchase one of these desserts for a dinner later in the week. Now, suppose that this same consumer is not at the grocery store but is instead at home drawing up a shopping list of items, including frozen desserts, that she will purchase on her next grocery store visit. In the former circumstance, the consumer is selecting from items that are lined up in front of her at the store itself; in the latter circumstance, the consumer must attempt to recall the items available at the store and only then can select which item to include on her shopping list. Under which circumstance will the consumer be more likely to opt for a sinful dessert, such as chocolate cake or cheese- cake, over a healthy alternative, such as fruit salad? Such questions were first suggested by Lynch and Srull (1982) in a seminal article in which they contrasted decisions in which relevant choice options were specified or listed for consumers (as when the consumer peruses options stocked at the grocery store) from decisions in which consumers on their own recalled the identity of relevant options (as when *Yuval Rottenstreich is associate professor of management and orga- nizations, Stern School of Business, New York University, New York Uni- versity, New York, NY 10012 (yuval@stern.nuy.edu). Sanjay Sood is as- sociate professor of marketing, Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, 110 Westwood Plaza, B414, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (sood@ucla.edu). Lyle Brenner is associate professor of marketing, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-7155 (lyle .brenner@cba.ufl.edu). Dawn Iacobucci served as editor and Mary Frances Luce served as as- sociate editor for this article. Electronically published December 6, 2006 the consumer draws up a shopping list while at home). Lynch and Srull classified the former type of decisions as “stimulus based” and the latter type as “memory based.” In this article, we examine differences in stimulus-based and memory-based choices that may be explained by dual-pro- cess theories of mental processing. Although the terms stim- ulus based and memory based are commonly used to refer to a number of distinctions, we use these terms to refer only to whether choice options are specified or must be recalled by the consumer. Recent research has identified two distinct modes of thought, one associative and feeling based, the other delib- erate and rule based (Chaiken and Trope 1999; Epstein 1994; Peters and Slovic 2000; Sloman 1996; Stanovich and West 2002). For instance, Kahneman and Frederick (2002) con- trast what they call system 1 and system 2 mental processing. They describe system 1 as automatic, rapid, associative, and affective and system 2 as controlled, slow, deliberative, and deductive. Moreover, they view system 2 as an effortful check on the more reflex-like system 1. They write: “System 1 quickly proposes intuitive answers . . . system 2 monitors the quality of these proposals, which it may endorse, correct, or override” (Kahneman and Frederick 2002, 51). We argue that memory-based choices tend to reflect rel- atively more system 1 processing, whereas stimulus-based choices reflect relatively more system 2 processing. Thus, memory-based choices tend to favor immediately compel- ling, affect-rich options, whereas stimulus-based choices tend to favor affect-poor options whose attractiveness emerges only given more deliberative thought. A key prem- ise underlying our claim is that memory-based choices are made in a context of relatively depleted processing capacity.