Exercise
16: Alternative Evaluation: The Process and Evaluative Criteria
Objectives
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Background
Overview of the Alternative Evaluation Process
The third stage
in the consumer decision-making process—pre-purchase
alternative evaluation—is the process of comparing various alternatives
identified during information search in order to choose among them by comparing
them on evaluative criteria
(attributes). If this information is favorable enough, consumers then form a buying intention, a plan to select an
alternative.
Figure 16-1
provides an overview of the alternative evaluation process.
<<FIGURE 16.1 HERE>>
Inputs to Alternative
Evaluation
In order for a customer to
evaluate alternatives, three inputs are required, as shown by the three boxes
on the left-hand side of Figure 16-1.
First, buyers decide on evaluative (choice, decision, buying,
purchase) criteria (criteria)—those attributes or characteristics of
alternatives consumers use to consider, compare, evaluate, and select one or
more of them. These criteria include: (1) the product’s physical features, such as price, quality, and
style, and (2) consumer benefits,
such as saving money, having comfort, and impressing friends.
Second, customers determine the relative
importance (weights, importance weights) of the criteria. Finally, buyers decide on the members of
their evoked set.
Mental Elements Formed During Alternative
Evaluation
The first mental element
formed during alternative evaluation is beliefs—the
consumer’s perception about how each alternative performs on the important
criteria. These beliefs give rise to an attitude—a
favorable or unfavorable evaluation of an alternative based on the customer’s
beliefs. If beliefs about a brand are generally positive, then the attitude
will be positive. Third, a buying
intention (purchase intention,
intention to buy, behavioral intention, purchase plan, propensity to buy)
is formed toward the most favorable option—the one for which the consumer feels
brand preference.
Results of Alternative Evaluation
Barring any unanticipated circumstances, such as a
retail stockout on the preferred brand or peer pressure to buy a less-preferred
brand, consumers will select their favored alternative. Alternatively, the
decision process might be put on hold, either temporarily or permanently, due
to perceived resource constraints or perceived lack of alternatives worth
pursuing.
The Nature of Evaluative Criteria
Evaluative criteria
answer the question, “What do buyers look for when they purchase this product?”
Salient attributes come readily to
buyer’s minds and are on the tip of their tongues. Hence, although research
respondents will mention them when asked what criteria they use in judging
brands in a product class, salient attributes aren’t necessarily important. Important attributes are s attributes that are significant to the
consumer. Clearly, the marketer must (1) perform well on and (2) stress theses important
characteristics when promoting a product.
A criterion could
be salient, for example, due to recent exposure to an advertisement which drums
a characteristic into consumers’ heads (“The toothpaste is ‘minty fresh!’ or a
recent personal experience such as a problem incurred. A follow-up probe to
determine why a respondent mentioned
a characteristic might reveal whether it is cited merely because it is salient
rather than truly important.
It is possible,
however, that even though an attribute is important, it isn’t used to compare
brands if the consumer believes that all brands perform more or less equally on
the criterion. For example, a pitch that “Soapee soap will get your hands and
face really clean” won’t make the cash registers ring. There has to be
something more: Maybe one brand better fights bacteria, while another smells
nice, and a third comes in a unique shape.
That is,
consumers evaluate brands on determinant
attributes—criteria that are (1) important
and (2) used to distinguish brands
because not all alternatives are viewed by customers as performing equally. A toaster oven’s ability to brown bread evenly is
important but not determinant. Think about what makes you buy one brand
rather than another in a given category product. That is a determinant
attribute.
The General Types of
Choice Criteria: Features and Benefits
Product features
(physical attributes, concrete
attributes, dimensions, traits, and product specifications (specs) constitute the tangible product—physical properties of
a product such as its size, shape, styling, color and other aspects of product
design. A shampoo’s features include its ingredients, pH balance, alkaline
contents, and degree of concentration. Product development activities are
concerned with forming features, each
of which delivers one or more product benefits.
Product benefits are satisfactions, consumption
goals, or desired consequences
consumers get from the features. Functional
benefits relate to utilitarian (functional) needs and concern the product’s end uses or applications—the
activity that will yield the desired experiential
and/or symbolic benefits. Functional
benefits answer the questions, “What is the product used for?” and “What are its practical applications?” Shampoo can be used to clean hair and make it
glisten.
The other two
types of benefits both relate to hedonic
(experiential) needs. Experiential
(hedonic) benefits answer the questions, “How does it feel to use the
product?” and “What kind of experiences does the product provide?” A shampoo
brand’s experiential benefits could include leaving hair feeling soft, having a
clean scent, and looking bright and shiny.
Symbolic benefits relate to brand imagery and symbolic
needs for self-expression to reflect one’s self-concept. Symbolic benefits answer the question, “What types of
people use the brand?” A shampoo brand’s promoted symbolic benefits might
include leaving hair looking young, giving hair a sexy appearance, and being
associated with glamorous, sophisticated, upscale middle-aged women.
As Figure 16-2
shows, generally, features give rise
to functional benefits, which in turn
lead to either experiential benefits
and/or symbolic benefits. For
example, Certs mints has a drop of Retsin (feature), which provides fresh
breath (function), making your mouth feel fresh (experiential benefit) and
giving you sex appeal (symbolic benefit).
<<FIGURE 16.2 NEAR
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Means-end Chain Analysis Links Features and
Benefits to Personal Values
Means-end chain analysis says that product features are the means
for obtaining the ends, which are the
product benefits and personal values (personal outcomes). Figure 16-3 shows the relationship between the
elements of the means-end chain.
<<Figure 16-3 around here>>
The consumer’s
ultimate ends are to fulfill her personal
values—beliefs about in which ideal
states to be. Personal values answer the question, “Why are the product’s
benefits important to the buyer?”
There are two
types of consumer values. Terminal values are personal desirable end states of being (existence)—how people would like to
eventually experience their lives. Examples: achievement at work, financial
security, and self-respect. Instrumental
values are ideal states of doing
or modes of conduct required to
achieve the terminal states of being. These include hard work, frugality,
helpfulness, honesty, and obedience.
Personal values,
then, are personal outcomes important to someone. Evaluative criteria are a means to satisfying the ends of
fulfilling these values. So, having hands that look and feel clean (benefit) might be critical since people value beauty. Possessing young-looking
hands (benefit) is significant
because we treasure youth (personal value).
As another
example of a means-end chain analysis, flavored potato chips might have the feature of barbecue flavor, yielding the
hedonic benefits of tasting good and
having guests enjoy themselves more, and the symbolic benefit of the party giver feeling as a good host or
hostess. The terminal value would be
social recognition and friendship.
Consumer
Research to Obtain Information on the Alternative Evaluation Process
Before designing
a product and crafting its promotion, the marketer must determine:
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(1) which
evaluative criteria consumers use in evaluating the product,
(2) each criterion’s relative importance in the decision process,
(3) those brands in consumers’ evoked sets, and
(4) consumers’ beliefs about how evoked set alternatives perform on the criteria.
Research inputs
are required on each of these.
Input #1:
Evaluative Criteria Used
To discover what the important and determinant
criteria are, researchers use either a large-scale survey or small-scale
focus groups. Respondents are requested to recall which criteria they used to
evaluate a given product. The researcher asks questions like, “How do you go
about comparing different brands of antihistamines,”? “What do you look for in
deciding which cold or allergy medicine you’ll buy,”? or “How do you go about
choosing among different brands of antihistamines?”
Researchers
asking such questions must be alert for response
bias—a survey respondent’s conscious or unconscious misrepresentation of
the truth. Response bias occurs either via deliberate
falsification—unwillingness to tell the truth, such as the person who won’t
admit drinking to excess, or nondeliberate
falsification—unconscious misrepresentation or inability to tell the truth
due to factors such as forgetting, fatigue, and unfamiliarity.
Input #2:
Relative Importance of Criteria
Once a list of
important and determinant attributes has been developed, the marketer must next
discover the importance weights of
those characteristics. Most such research uses surveys employing rating scales—questions that ask
interviewees to estimate the magnitude of “something” on a continuum, as
illustrated in Figure 16-4. In this case, the “something” is an attribute’s
importance. The respondent estimates how important that attribute is to him by
checking off or circling a point on a 5- or 7-point scale anchored “very
important” to “very unimportant.”
However, a
characteristic might be rated very important because the consumer considers the
presence of that attribute to be undesirable rather than beneficial, such as sourness
in a beverage. To overcome this difficulty, the analyst can instead use an evaluative scale, which tells not only
the magnitude but also the direction of the importance rating. The
evaluative scale has one end that says very favorable” or “very good” and the
other end reading “very unfavorable” or “very poor.” The ratings on the positive
end of the scale range from 1 to 3, while those on the negative side go from –1
to –3. Thus, having a particular characteristic, such as a smooth texture in a
beverage, might be rated by a respondent as +2, while another criterion, such
as a creamy taste, might be rated as –3. The assumption is that the further
from the midpoint of the scale (0) a consumer rates an attribute, the more
strongly s/he feels about that criterion and so the more important it is.
<<FIGURE 16.4 NEAR
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Alternatively, respondents
can be given a rank-order importance
scale, in which they rank a list of product criteria in order of personal
importance: most important, second most important, and so on. In a snack chip,
flavor could be ranked first in importance, saltiness second, and crunchiness
third.
Input #3: Alternatives in the Evoked Set
Next, researchers
need to know which brands are members of the consumer’s evoked set. Usually, straightforward questioning of respondents
about brands they consider in choosing within the product category is used.
Input #4:
Beliefs about Alternatives’ Performance on the Criteria
Finally,
researchers ask about consumers’ beliefs
about how every brand performs on each attribute, measured by their brand ratings, again using rating scales. Typically, for each
alternative in a buyer’s evoked set, a listing of product criteria and brands is
presented, and the respondent then rates each brand’s performance on each
attribute, from very satisfactory to very unsatisfactory, usually using either
a 5- or 7-point rating scale.
Applications of
Knowledge of the Alternative Evaluation Process
New Product
Development Applications
One approach for
developing new products is analytical
attribute analysis—examining product characteristics to generate new
product ideas and design new as well as improved products. The underlying idea
is that a future product change must come from altering one or more of a
product’s criteria, such as making a battery longer lasting or a pudding
creamier.
One approach is
to improve one or more criteria (“longer lasting”). Another technique is to add
one or more criteria to an existing product. PertPlus helped Procter &
Gamble become the worldwide leader in the shampoo market when they added hair
conditioner to Pert shampoo.
Analytical
attribute analysis begins with consumer research to understand the benefits
consumers seek but which aren’t being adequately delivered in the marketplace. After
identifying these benefits, marketers write a product concept statement—a verbal description of the new product
idea that describes its form (physical attributes), product functions (functional benefits), and delivered benefits (both hedonic
and symbolic).
Next, marketers
work with the technical groups—the research and development, engineering, and
product design departments—to create a product with features that will deliver
the desired benefits.
There are a
number of idea generation techniques to develop better products using analytical
attribute analysis:
Dimensional Analysis. Dimensional analysis
(attribute listing). begins
with an exhaustive listing of all of the physical features (dimensions) of a
product that developers think need improvement or modification. For each
characteristic, the analyst asks either consumers or managers; “How can we
change or improve this attribute to better deliver benefits?”
Possibilities include:
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Changing the nature of dimensions (e.g., concentrated detergent, mini versions
of cookies)
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Improving characteristics (e.g., resealable packaging, more chocolate flavor in
a candy bar)
•
Adding additional attributes (e.g., Chips Ahoy! Cookies added peanut butter
chips and candy pieces).
•
Borrowing a dimension from another product category (e.g., Bounty Quilted
napkins borrowed the strength and durability of their paper towels and applied
them to napkins).
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Attribute Extension. Attribute
extension (parameter analysis) starts
with a characteristic that has recently changed in the marketplace and then
extends that change to see what (if any) benefits will accrue to consumers. For
instance, low-fat foods and low-calorie sodas inevitably led to no-fat and
zero-calorie versions. Spectator sport events have been getting longer, so
perhaps we could develop a 24-hour marathon sport to satisfy the insatiable
sports fan
Advertising and Promotion Applications
During or
immediately following product development, the promotional people should
develop marketing communications to describe the benefits that the product will
deliver and the personal values that they will fulfill. Knowing about
determinant purchase criteria, their relative importance, and the various
evoked set brands’ performances on these attributes enables marketers to most
effectively promote those products by focusing on the brand’s superior relative
performance on those criteria.
However, keep in
mind the maxim, “Emphasize benefits, not features.” Consumers don’t buy
products, they purchase bundles of benefits.
In-Class Applications
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Written Applications
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a. Design a small-scale
survey using ten members of the target market to discover:
(1) Which criteria consumers use. Point out any
sources of response bias you suspect
might have occurred in your survey. If you wish, you may try building a means-end chain with one or several of
your respondents.
(2) The
relative importance of those criteria. This will require a second round of
questioning (using different respondents if you wish) after you’ve determined
the criteria they use. Which type of rating scale did you use and why?
(3) Alternatives in the evoked set. How did you determine these? How large was the typical
evoked set size?
(4) Beliefs
about performance of alternatives in
the evoked set on the criteria. Do you suspect any types of response bias here?
b. Come up with a new product concept using an analytical attribute analysis technique.
The product idea can range from a radically new-to-the-world product (e.g.,
non-melt ice cubes) to an incremental innovation (e.g., sugar-free spicy cola
Jell-O).
You can try dimensional analysis based on your
attribute list or attribute extension
using one of the characteristics.
c. Design a print ad for your
new product idea that promotes the product on its various evaluative criteria.
Discuss the general and specific types of criteria it is using and why this ad
will help persuade people to buy this product.
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