Descriptive and evaluative attributes: what relevance to marketers?
| Date | 01 November 2000 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420010356993 |
| Pages | 415-435 |
| Published date | 01 November 2000 |
| Author | Janet Hoek,Jason Dunnett,Malcolm Wright,Philip Gendall |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
Descriptive and evaluative
attributes: what relevance to
marketers?
Janet Hoek
Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Department of Marketing, Massey
University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Jason Dunnett
Graduate Student, Department of Marketing, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Malcolm Wright
Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Department of Marketing, Massey
University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Philip Gendall
Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Massey University,
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Keywords Brands, Consumer behaviour, Product differentiation
Abstract A growing number of studies have suggested that consumers hold very similar
beliefs about the brands they use within a product category. This implies that experience,
rather than marketing activity, leads consumers to associate attributes with brands.
Replicates and extends earlier studies and addresses methodological criticisms directed
at that work. Our findings reveal that descriptive attributes can be successfully predicted
and they confirm that the usage level of a brand typically determines the proportion of
consumers who hold favourable attitudes about that brand. The results question the
popular emphasis on positioning and brand differentiation and we conclude by
suggesting more behaviourally oriented strategies.
Introduction
The view that a positive attitude to a brand is vital to that brand's long-term
success commands wide currency (see Farr and Hollis, 1997). Among fast-
moving-consumer-goods (i.e. brands with short consumption cycles that are
typically bought from supermarkets), this assertion is tautologically true,
since consumers would hardly purchase brands they did not like when highly
substitutable alternatives existed. Yet while it is generally accepted that
consumers like the brands they buy, some debate still exists over whether
they must like a brand before they buy it.
Proponents of brand positioning suggest that brands should develop
distinct images and that these images will attract specific consumer segments
(see Trout and Ries, 1985). In other words, they assert that positive
images will lead to purchase behaviour. More recently, however,
Ehrenberg and his colleagues have queried several assumptions on which
positioning relies. First, they argue that most brands are not highly (or even
somewhat) differentiated from their competitors. Where a brand does
introduce a differentiating characteristic, they suggest that this is so
quickly copied by competing brands that the norm in mature fast-moving-
consumer-goods markets is a high level of substitutability (Ehrenberg et al.,
1997).
Following on from this, Ehrenberg argues that markets are not typically
partitioned or segmented either on the basis of brand attributes or consumers'
behaviour. Instead, most consumers have brand repertoires from which they
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Brands should develop
distinct images
JOURNAL OF PRODUCT & BRAND MANAGEMENT, VOL. 9 NO. 6 2000, pp. 415-435, #MCB UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1061-0421 415
An executive summary for
managers and executive
readers can be found at the
end of this article
purchase (Ehrenberg, 1991). Although consumers may have favourite brands
within their repertoires, these typically constitute only around one-third of
their share of category requirements. Ehrenberg thus concludes that the
general absence of sole-brand loyalty also suggests that consumers see
brands as highly substitutable.
Together, observation of brand attributes and consumers' fast-moving-
consumer-goods purchase behaviour suggests that brands within a product
category oftenappear very similar and are treatedas such by consumers. If this
is the case, marketers may not need to``position'' their brands,develop images
for them, or strongly persuade consumers to buy them. This suggestion does
not imply that consumers' beliefs about brands are unimportant,rather it raises
the possibility that the process of belief development and refinement may
differ from that traditionally proposed. The remainder of this section evaluates
earlier research which addressed this issue.
Review of literature
Ehrenberg's work
Bird et al. (1970) were among the first to examine whether a clear relationship
between brand attribute beliefs and usage frequency existed. They suggested
that ``the proportion of users of a brand who hold an attitude about it is
systematically related to the proportions of former users and never-trieds who
hold the attitude'' (p. 314). However, despite this conclusion, they queried
whether changesin the attributes consumersassociated with brands would lead
to changes in their purchase behaviour. To address this question, they called
for more work to investigate whether managers should foster the belief
attributes held by users of their brand, given that these attributes werealso held
by users of competing brands, or whether they should develop belief attributes
which differentiated their brand from other brands.
Conceptually, these two alternatives are quite different. The latter option
(brand differentiation) is clearly akin to positioning and relies on the
following logic:
IF
a positive image is created for a brand
AND IF
relevant consumers come to associate attributes that constitute this image with the
brand,
THEN
they will purchase, or will be more likely to purchase, the brand.
In other words, this logic implies that consumers can be persuaded to
purchase brands.
By contrast, the former reasoning (attribute reinforcement) has more in
common with the Awareness-Trial-Reinforcement model proposed by
Ehrenberg (1974) and refined by Barnard and Ehrenberg (1997) as the
Awareness-Trial-Reinforcement-Nudging (ATRN) model. This model
attributes a reinforcing role to advertising and suggests that it works to
maintain consumers' current behaviour patterns. Ehrenberg (1997) also
acknowledged that advertising may nudge consumers and move a brand
higher up a purchase hierarchy, but he argued that this ``does not call for new
values or beliefs being inculcated, or radical and strongly persuasive attitude
shifts'' (p. 22). To test which of these options, positioning or reinforcement,
provided the best explanation of the data, Bird et al. (1970) suggested further
cross-sectional research, some of which they undertook themselves.
Subsequent work (Bird and Ehrenberg, 1970; Barwise and Ehrenberg, 1985)
emphasised the absence of empirical generalisations which described the
Brand attribute beliefs and
usage frequency
Awareness-Trial-
Reinforcement model
416 JOURNAL OF PRODUCT & BRAND MANAGEMENT, VOL. 9 NO. 6 2000
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