Abstract
The analysis of the influence of advertising on choice in the following chapters is developed broadly in two stages. The first of these is concerned to discover the characteristics which, according to the sample survey of consumers, best differentiate between a group of competing brands, as well as how the characteristics themselves are perceptually interrelated. In the second stage the extent to which these perceived differences between characteristics are systematically related to advertising is analysed, among other means, by comparing them, where perceived characteristics are measurable, with the actual differences according to objective tests. This chapter deals with the methodological problems of the first of these stages — with the problems, that is, of how the perception of product characteristics by individuals is to be measured and analysed. Resolution of these measurement difficulties is the essential first step in the exercise as a whole.
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Notes and References
See J. P. Guilford, Psychometric Methods (McGraw-Hill, 1954 ) p. 14.
See, for example, P. E. Green and D. S. Tull, Research for Marketing Decisions, Second Edition (Prentice-Hall, 1970 ).
This is not strictly true. Through the psychometric method of triads it is possible to provide ordinal information about the size of differences. See, for example, W. S. Torgerson, Theory and Methods of Scaling (Wiley, 1958 ).
See R. Dawes, Fundamentals of Attitude Measurement (Wiley, 1972 ).
For a detailed description of this scale see C. E. Osgood, G. J. Suci and P. H. Tannenbaum, The Measurement of Meaning (University of Illinois Press, 1957 ).
See also G. A. Miller, ‘The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information’, The Psychological Review, vol. 63 (March, 1956 ).
See M. Fishbein and I. Ajzen, Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behaviour: An Introduction to Theory and Research (Addison-Wesley, 1975).
For useful general texts on multidimensional scaling techniques see R. N. Shepard, A. K. Romney and S. Nerlove (eds.), Multidimensional Scaling: Theory and Application in the Behavioral Sciences (Seminar Press, 1972 )
P. E. Green and V. R. Rao, Applied Multidimensional Scaling: A Comparison of Approach and Algorithms ( Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972 ).
and J. B. Kruskal and M. Wish, Multidimensional Scaling (Sage, 1978 ).
The explanation of projection draws heavily on P. E. Green, Mathematical Tools for Applied Multivariate Analysis (Academic Press, 1976 ).
See A. C. Chiang, Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics (McGraw-Hill, 1967 ).
See, for example, Y. Wind and P. Robinson, ‘Product Positioning: An Application of Multidimensional Scaling’ in R. Haley (ed.), Attitude Research in Transition, Series No. 15 ( American Marketing Association, 1972 ); Green and Tull, op. cit.; Green and Rao, op. cit.
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© 1983 Jeffrey James
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James, J. (1983). Methodology: Scaling Product Characteristics. In: Consumer Choice in the Third World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06109-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06109-9_4
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