Determinant Buying Attitudes: Meaning and Measurement Author(s): James H. Myers and Mark I.

Alpert Source: Journal of Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 1968), pp. 13-20 Published by: American Marketing Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1249332 . Accessed: 13/11/2013 15:47
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DeterminantBuying Meaning
JAMES H. MYERS and MARK 1. ALPERT

Attitudes:

and

Measurement
A LTHOUGH a great amount of effort is spent in measuring attitudes toward products or services, in many cases little time is devoted to determining what attitudes mean in terms of decision making and especially buying action. Some researchers do not even bother to ask respondents which attitudes they consider important, or which attitudes predispose them toward a particular choice in the marketplace. And even when these questions are asked, answers are often not related to actual buying behavior. Yet this is the really crucial information in consumer attitudinal research in most cases. This paper will discuss determinant attitudes, their meaning and relevance to marketing strategy, and methods by which they can be measured. Hopefully, this discussion will encourage marketers of all types to give greater thought to the relevance of attitudes rather than to their measurement only. Meaning of Attitude Determinance

Which attitudes are related to purchasing decisions? In this article the authorsargue that out of many possible attitudes only a few really relate to or "determine" buying behavior. These attitudes are defined in this article and methods of measuringthem are discussed.
Journal of Marketing, 1968), pp. 13-20. Vol. 32 (October,

In the wide spectrum of all of the various features of a product or brand, there are some features which predispose consumers to action (that is, to preference for the product, to actual purchase, to making recommendations to friends, etc.) and others which do not. Attitudes toward features which are most closely related to preference or to actual purchase decisions are said to be determinant; the remaining features or attitudes-no matter how favorable-are not determinant. Marketers obviously need to know which attitudes or features lead to-or "determine"-buying behavior, for these are the features around which marketing strategy must be built. Yet this distinction is often not clearly drawn or properly developed, even in many sophisticated consumer products or service firms. The concept herein called attitude "determinance" is essentially the same as what Krech and Crutchfield have defined as "importance."1 The present authors have chosen to define a new term because "importance" has become diluted by loose usage. It usually connotes no more than a moderate relationship to decision making, while we wish to discuss attitudes which are truly decisive. Hence, we prefer "determinance," a term which can have more specific meaning than "importance." For every product, brand, pattern, style, or other individual offering to the public, there are at least two "levels" of evaluation by consumers: 1. Overall attitude toward the item, in terms of its suitability or desirability. The relationship of overall attitude to subsequent 1David Krech and Richard S. Crutchfield, Theory and Problems of Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1948).

13

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14 14 buying action has been discussed by Palda,2 DuBois,3 Howard,4 and others. 2. Attitudes toward each of the item's component These attitudes features or characteristics. presumably combine or summate in some way to produce an "overall attitude" toward the item. This paper will consider primarily these latter types of attitudes; for example, what the important features or characteristics are and how, they combine to affect both the overall evaluation of an item and the actual purchasing decision. Strictly speaking, then, this article will discuss "feature determinance," or "attribute determinance," rather than "attitude determinance," since the various features and attributes are what combine into the whole. However, since it is the attitudes toward the various features that combine into the overall evaluation or attitude, often reference will be made to determinant attitudes rather than features. With reference to determinant attitudes, Nelson Foote, Manager of the Consumer and Public Relations Research Program for General Electric, commented: In the electrical appliance business, we have been impressed over and over by the way in which certain characteristics of products come to be taken for granted by consumers, especially those concerned with basic functional performance or with values like safety. If these values are missing in a product, the user is extremely offended. But if they are present, the maker or seller gets no special credit or preference, because quite logically every other maker and seller is assumed to be offering equivalent values. In other words, the values that are salient in decision-making are the values that are problematic-that are important, to be sure but also those which differentiate one offering from another.5 To further illustrate this concept, in proprietary studies asking consumers to evaluate such automobile attributes as power, comfort, economy, appearance, and safety, consumers often rank safety as first in importance. However, these same consumers do not see various makes of cars as differing widely with respect to safety; therefore, safety is not a determinant attitude or feature in the actual pur2

Marketing, October, Journal of October, 1968 of ~Marketing, chase decision. Without the knowledge that consumers see little difference among cars in terms of safety, it would be natural for the manufacturer to conclude that safety is an important motivator in terms of the purchasing decision and to stress this in promotion efforts, when the same funds might be more effectively used to stress attributes which actually determine product choice. This is not to say, of course, that a manufacturer can get away with ignoring safety considerations. At any given time, all the various brands may have about the same level of perceived possession of an attribute (safety), and thus it will not be as important for the present as some attribute for which differences are the basis for current brand preferences. This should rightly lead the company to concentrate on raising its performance in features other than safety. However, if safety is totally ignored, the brand may soon be perceived as being so unsafe that its share of the market might slip. This would imply that safety could achieve determinance, a quality it would hold until concentration on safety by the "unsafe" company would bring its product back into line with the others. Thus, determinance is a dynamic concept, and studies relating attitudes to buying behavior need to be repeated often enough to keep informed of these possible shifts. Non-determinant Attitudes The concept of determinant attitudes can further be illustrated by showing results from a recent study

* ABOUT THE AUTHORS. James H. Myers is DeBell Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California, where he received his Ph.D. ' | in Psychology. Prior to that he was Director of Research for the Western Home Office of the Prudential Insurance Company, Los Angeles. Dr. Myers also serves as consultant to Haug Associates in Los Angeles. He is coauthor of CONSUMER BEHAVIORand MARKETING MANAGEMENT and author of the forthcoming book THE MANAGEMENT OF MARKETING RESEARCH. He has written'widely for various marketing and statistical journals. Mark I. Alpert is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. in Industrial Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.B.A. in Marketing and an M.S. in Quantitative Business Analysis from the University of Southern California. He is currently completing a D.B.A. dissertation in Marketing, also at the University of Southern California. Mr. Alpert was a member of the Pilot Doctoral Consortium of the American Marketing Association, in 1966, and for the past year has been Assistant Professor of Marketing at the California State College at Long Beach.

Kristian S. Palda, "The Hypothesis of a Hierarchy of Effects: A Partial Evaluation," Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 3 (February, 1966), pp. 13-24. 3 Cornelius DuBois, "The Story of Brand XL: How Consumer Attitudes Affected Its Market Position," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 24, Proceedings, Fifteenth Annual Conference, American Association for Public Opinion Research (Fall, 1960), pp. 479480. 4 John A. Howard, Marketing: Executive and Buyer Behavior (Columbia University Press, 1963). 5 Nelson N. Foote, "Consumer Behavior: Household Decision-Making," Vol. 4 (New York University Press, 1961).

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Determinant

Buying Attitudes: Meaning and Measurement Buying TABLE1

15 15 Identifying Determinant Attitudes In order to identify which attitudes are determi-

OF PASSENGERS RATING "EXCELLENT" PERCENTAGE Airline #1 43% 42 44 45 61 39 74 61 61 42 Airline #2 46% 53 49 57 62 41 71 62 59 45 Airline

#3

Feature Overall Service Baggage Check-In Ticket Counter Boarding Gate Liquor, 1st Class Liquor, Coach Hostess, 1st Class Hostess, Coach Food, 1st Class Food, Coach

nant and to discern their relative degree of determinance, it is necessary to go beyond the mere scaling

49% 48 46 47 52 37 66 55 52 36

of respondents' attitudes. The study design must also include a methodology for measuring determinance, for this will not just naturally develop in the course of scaling.
There are three major approaches to identifying

determinant attitudes:
1. Direct questioning 2. Indirect questioning, including research and covariate analysis motivation

3. Observation and experiment

At the present time, it is apparently not known which of these three is most effective for any given

wherein these attitudes did not emerge. This study was undertaken by an airline to measure its image

and that of its competitors among the flying public.

Passengers on each of three airlines were asked

to rate that airline (the one they were traveling on)

on various factors or features thought to be important, and then to give an overall evaluation of that airline. Results are shown in Table 1. What is being sought is one or more of the rated features or services that relate to the evaluation of overall service. That is, the airline rated highest on overall service should also be rated highest on at least one of the service features covered in the survey. Conversely, the lowest rated airline should also be rated lowest on this same feature. Such a feature would thus be related to the overall evaluation and would likely be a "determinant" attitude in terms

problem or application. (A definitive study comparing these approaches under carefully controlled conditions is under way as part of a doctoral dissertation by the second author of this paper.) The purpose of this article is not to answer the question of the comparative effectiveness of the three approaches, but rather to present illustrations of each so that the techniques will be clear and can be used by future investigators.
Direct Questioning The most obvious way to approach determinant

attitudes is, of course, to ask consumers directly

what factors they consider important in a purchasing

decision. Thus, the respondent is asked to state his reasons for preferring one product or brand
to another, or possibly to explain why he buys one item and not another. Or, he may be asked to rate his "ideal brand" for a given product in terms of several product attributes, so that an ideal profile

of choice of airline. It is interesting to note from Table 1 that the airline receiving the highest overall evaluation (Airline #3) was not rated highest on any of the various components or features. As a matter of fact, it was rated lowest on six of the
nine features! Apparently none of the features covered in this survey is related to, or "determines," the choice among airlines. What does determine

may be constructed.

In any event, direct ques-

tioning approaches put the respondent "on the spot"

concerning his own motivations, as opposed to such

indirect questioning methods as "motivation research," which infer a person's motives from what he says in response to indirect questioning or to

choice, then? We apparently do not know, at least from the results of this survey. The reader may protest that the criterion (overall evaluation) is attitudinal, and not behavioral. What people say may not be what they do, when it comes
to actual choice among competing airlines. Yet the airline receiving the highest overall evaluation (Air-

line #3)

was also the one showing the greatest

projective stimuli. For many years, direct questioning involved asking respondents to tell why they bought or did not buy a given product as a means of uncovering determinant attitudes. Variations of this traditional approach called for asking the respondent to name the attributes he looks for in his choice of a given
product. The researcher tabulated responses accord-

increase in share of market in preceding months. Even then, however, one must be cautious in inferring causality from relationships, as in any non-

experimental study. It might be, for example, that Airline #3 also increased its schedules the most during this period of time. However, when both attitudinal and behavioral criteria point in the same direction, marketers can feel more confident in drawing conclusions about determinant attitudes.

ing to attribute categories and presumed that frequency of naming an attribute indicated its relative importance in the buying decision. This approach has the appeal of seeming to get directly to the issue of "Why do you buy?" However, it has unfortunately rested upon two very questionable assumptions, namely: (1) the respondent knows why he buys or prefers one product to an-

other, and (2) the respondent will willingly tell what

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16
TABLE 2 RATINGS OF SAVINGS AND IMPORTANCE
LOAN CHARACTERISTICS

Journal 1968 Journal of Marketing, October, 1968

TABLE 3 DIFFERENCERATING OF SAVINGSAND
LOAN CHARACTERISTICS

Benefit or Claim
Safety of money Interest rate earned Government insurance Financial strength Ease of withdrawing money Management ability Attitude of personnel Speed/efficiency of service Compounding frequency Branch location convenience Time required to earn interest

Average Ratings*
1.4

Parking convenience Years in business Other services

Building/office attractiveness Premiums offered

1.6 1.6 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.2 2.3 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1 3.4 4.0

Benefit or Claim Years in business Financial strength Parking convenience Safety of money Management ability Government insurance Branch location convenience Attitude of personnel
Interest rate earned

Big Diff. 53% 40 37 36 35 35 34 34 33 32 29 28 26 24 21 15

Small Diff. 31% 32 35 15 26

11

No

Diff. 10% 22 22 47 27 51 28 33 35 35 48 31 33 30 29 38

Don't Know 6% 6 6 2 12 3 2 5 2 5 5 5 7 2 16
11

36 28 30 28 18 36 34
44

Speed/efficiency of service
Ease of withdrawing money

Compounding frequency
Time required to earn interest

* (1-"extremely
2-"very

Building/office important"
attractiveness

important"

3-"fairly important" 4-"slightly important," etc.) these reasons are. The literature of marketing research contains refutations of these assumptions; it is not necessary to go into great detail disputing them here. The plain fact appears to be that consumers often do not understand their own reasons for purchasing something, and even when they do they are unwilling to admit what may make them look foolish or irrational. Consequently many answers given to traditional direct questioning approaches have often been faithfully reported, analyzed, and acted upon, only to learn later that the action taken proved to be irrelevant to the typical consumer's purchasing decision. "Ideal" Attributes A direct questioning approach which has been popular consists of asking respondents to describe the characteristics of the "ideal" brand or company in the product or service category being studied. By also asking for ratings on a particular brand in terms of these characteristics, one hopes to find out where "gaps" exist between his own brand image and the optimal brand image. Unfortunately, this approach shares the problems of traditional direct questioning, in that people may have difficulty in conceptualizing the "ideal" brand and also might be unwilling to admit to some of the attributes by which they really are influenced. An excellent illustration of this approach can be found in an article by Bolger.6 6 John F. Bolger, Jr., "How to Evaluate Your Company Image," JOURNALOF MARKETING, Vol. 24 (October, 1959), pp. 7-10.

Other services offered Premiums offered

34 36

Dual Questioning Another problem common to the above approaches is that there is little attempt by the researcher to account for the fact that certain attributes which might be seen by respondents as being important, are also seen as being possessed in equal degree by the competing alternative selections. Where this occurs, any approach which merely asks "What is ?" will overemphaimportant in choosing a ...... size the role of such attributes as automobile safety, for example (as mentioned earlier in this paper). For even if one elicits honest answers, the questions may not be sufficiently meaningful to allow the focus to be narrowed to attributes which truly determine consumer behavior. This problem leads to another major direct questioning approach, one which will be called "dual This approach involves asking two questioning." questions concerning each product attribute which might be determinant. Consumers are first asked directly what factors they consider important in a purchasing decision, and then they are asked how they perceive these factors as differing among the various products or brands. As an illustration of this approach, consider Tables 2 and 3 which were developed in the process of a survey among the general public in the Los Angeles area relative to attitudes toward savings and loan associations. (The various benefits or claims are ranked in descending order in each table, so that comparisons between the tables can be made more easily.) Notice that some items rank high in rated importance but are not thought to differ much among the various savings and loan associations (for example, safety of money, interest rate earned). Thus,

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Determinant

Buying Attitudes: Meaning and Measurement

17

while safety of money was ranked first in importance, about half of all respondents felt there was no difference among savings and loan associations in terms of safety; therefore, safety of funds might not be the most determinant attitude even though it was rated the most important attitude by respondents. Conversely, some items show big differences among the various associations but are considered to be of relatively little importance in determining the choice of a savings and loan association (for example, years in business, parking convenience). On the other hand, interest rate shows a very high "importance" ranking and far fewer respondents feel there is no difference among the various associations relative to interest rate. Also, financial strength was somewhat lower in rated importance, but was second highest in terms of the difference among various associations. Therefore, these twointerest rate and financial strength-might be relatively determinant attitudes. In similar fashion, the researcher can proceed through an analysis of the various ratings to identify which attitudes seem to influence the choice most among various savings and loan associations and are thus presumably the most determinant. Indirect Questioning Another approach to identifying determinant attitudes is through indirect questioning, of which there are many forms. We will define "indirect questioning" as any interviewing approach which does not directly ask respondents to indicate the reasons why they bought a product or service, or which features or attributes are most important in determining choice. The most prominent form of indirect questioning is probably "motivation research," but it is by no means the only way indirect questioning can be done or used. Motivation Research In spite of the claims of motivation researchers that they are always uncovering the "real" reasons for buying, few carefully controlled studies can be cited in support of this position. One comparative study was done by Gerhard Wiebe,7 contrasting results from "incomplete sentence" questions with results from direct questions on the same topic, in a survey for a firm which provides building maintenance services for large office buildings. The incomplete sentence approach produced, in this case at least, not only more information but also feelings of a different tone than were obtained from conventional direct questioning. It appears from Wiebe's results that dissatisfactions over personnel were more important than direct questioning would indicate. However, it should be noted that no attempt 7 Gerhard D. Wiebe, "Sampling-Motivation Research Merger: How Will It Aid Ad Men?" Printers' Ink (November 28, 1958), p. 23 ff.

was made to relate these responses to any action or even to expected action on the part of customers. Inference of "Ideal" Attributes An approach which is more quantified than most motivational research techniques, yet less quantified than the covariate and regression models discussed later, is that of inferring an "ideal" brand from responses which describe people's feelings about a number of competing brands or companies. These methods are similar to direct questioning; however, the respondent is not asked to expose his preferences and motives to the extent required in directly rating the "ideal" company or brand. Louis Cohen infers the "ideal" image from the varying degree of association between certain traits and companies which are ranked at varying levels of desirability.8 Cohen asks respondents to associate a list of traits with several companies, and also to rank the companies on an overall basis. For each trait he then compiles a listing of the percentage of respondents associating it with their own highest rated company, and the percentage associating it with their lowest rated company. The ratio of these two percentages is called the "differentiation ratio," and traits are then ranked in descending order of the value of this ratio. The higher the ratio, the more closely a given trait is associated with high overall rating. Cohen compares this list with a list of traits said to be "most important," according to respondents, and shows that the second list, consisting mostly of cliches, does not separate high-rated companies from low ones, whereas there is some evidence presented to show that the first list does. Crespi,9 approaching the problem in a similar manner, uses the Stapel scale (a modified semantic differential scale) to compare image scores for sales leaders and sales trailers, in terms of various attributes such as "modern looking," "neat," and "masculine." The major theoretical difference between this approach and Cohen's is that Cohen's profile of the number one company is a composite of several companies, all rated number one by their rater, while Crespi's sales leader is the single company, not a composite. Covariate Analysis Another way to discover the relative influence of various attitudes toward the purchasing decision is to cast the results of indirect questions into a covariate model of some sort. This method will provide a more systematic means of uncovering relationships between attitudes and behavior; for example, comparing attitudes of users and non-users of a product, Louis Cohen, "The Differentiation Ratio in Corporate Image Research," Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 7 (September, 1967), pp. 32-36. 9 Irving Crespi, "Use of a Scaling Technique in Surveys," JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Vol. 25 (January, 1961), pp. 69-72.
8

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18 high overall evaluations versus low overall evaluations, etc. Several illustrations of this approach are presented below. One simplified but effective covariate approach is used by General Motors in determining which attitudes (features) should be stressed in advertisements. By comparing people who say they would consider buying a "Watusi" car with people who say they would not consider buying a Watusi, Smith found the two groups were very comparable on most automobile features (for example, styling, gas mileage, interior), but that there was a wide difference between those groups in terms of their perception of the trade-in value of the Watusi. This then would seem to be the "most determinant" of the features covered by the Smith survey.10 Another approach is to use formal correlation analysis, to develop relationships between component attitudes and overall evaluations and/or buying behavior. Seymour Banks used this approach in the study of coffee and scouring powder brands. Using linear discriminate analysis (which determines the relative importance of attitudes which can be used to divide users from non-users of a given brand), Banks found that only three of the six rated attributes of scouring powder were related to later purchase: cleansing ability, price, and harshness on hands. For coffee, only flavor and price were important factors. Attitudes toward other product features were not found to be related either to actual purchase or to overall product preference."1 Another covariate model is illustrated by a regression analysis by the authors, which was designed to identify determinant attitudes for a cocktail dip mix. The mix was placed in 200 homes in the Los Angeles area that were members of the TRENDSETTERS PANEL of Haug Associates, Inc., Los Angeles. Homemakers were asked to prepare the dip according to instructions and to serve it to their families and/or friends. There was no identifying name on the cocktail dip mix. After serving the mix, housewives were asked to rate it on the following seven aspects: Overall opinion Color Overall appearance Taste Strength of flavor Spiciness Attitude toward buying Each aspect except strength of flavor and spiciness was rated on a seven-point scale, from "Liked very much" to "Disliked very much." Strength of flavor and spiciness were rated on a five-point scale from "Much too strong (spicy)" to "Much too weak Smith, "How GM Measures Ad Effectiveness," Printers' Ink (May 14, 1965), pp. 19-29. 11Seymour Banks, "The Relationship Between Preference and Purchase of Brands," JOURNAL OF MARKETING,Vol. 15 (October,1950), pp. 145-157.
10 Gail

Journal of Journal 1968 of Marketing, October, 1968 Marketing, October, (bland)." Ratings on the seven aspects were intercorrelated, this time using a "stepwise multiple regression" program written by the Health Sciences Computing Facility, U.C.L.A. "Buying intention" was designated as the dependent variable, with the remaining six variables as independent variables. The results indicated that taste, and taste alone, is the determinant attitude or feature about this cocktail dip mix, at least among housewives in the Los Angeles area. (A similar analysis on a packaged gravy mix showed that taste again was most important, but that color was much more important than for the dip mix.) Another regression analysis, this time for a cat food, showed that none of the usual features identifiable by humans (for example, color, taste, odor, texture) were determinant features; rather, how much of the food the cat ate relative to how much food it usually ate at that time of day was found to be the crucial factor. Of course, it is always possible that some feature (such as color or appearance of the dip mix, for example) might be totally unacceptable to respondents, so that these product characteristics would be rated very low and might indeed be cause for rejection of the product. This points out a major limitation of covariate analysis; namely, such analysis by itself does not indicate the absolute level of acceptance of the various product characteristics, and thus cannot be relied on to give the complete story. Therefore, correlation analysis applies mainly throughout the "sensitive range" of product feature desirability among the public. It should also be noted that both the cat food and dip mix regression analyses were done on a single brand of a product line. They did not involve either the choice among brands or the actual purchase of a product, and these might seem to be the more common and important problems. On the other hand, the single brand evaluation presented in this article is also a very common problem with consumer products manufacturers who are in the testing stage of introducing a new product. Thus, both problems (single brand and choice among brands) are very real and legitimate problems for an inquiry of this type, and methodology is basically the same for both situations. The above covariate models have in common the relating of product or service component ratings with some criterion, be it product purchase, brand preference, or some overall evaluation of the product or service. Within this framework, many types of models are possible. Of course, all will suffer from the weakness of any covariate model in that relationship does not indicate causality. Experimental models are the proper way to determine causality, and these models are discussed in the next section.
Observation and Experimentation

One of the oldest techniques for attempting to identify consumer buying motives is that of direct

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Determinant Buying Attitudes: Meaning and Measurement observation of consumers in purchasing situations. A modern example of this method, as well as a clear analysis of its advantages and disadvantages, may be found in Wells's and Lo Sciuto's "Direct Observation of Purchasing Behavior."12 The authors discuss a study in which supermarket shoppers were observed, and detailed reports were recorded of their movements and statements when interacting with certain products on display in a series of stores. The authors then drew conclusions concerning who does the shopping, the influence of children and adult males on purchasing decisions, the influence of price, and also where brand choices seem to be made and how much package study is involved. One of the findings of this study was that shoppers seemed to be rejecting candy packaged one way in favor of candy packaged another way. This finding would suggest that package design might be one determinant feature, though by no means the only one. The experimental approach to attribute determinance may be viewed as an extension of the observational method, for in this approach an attempt is made to isolate the role of one or more specific features by holding all others constant, varying the factor in question, and then measuring the impact upon some operationally defined performance criterion, such as buying choice. This approach shares the advantages of the observational approach in terms of not relying on respondent's answers, and in addition it attempts to isolate specific factors to explain why behavior occurs as well. However, where many factors must be observed, the experimental procedure is often very costly. In addition, many buying decisions take place in environments which cannot be controlled without significantly altering the relative role of the buying influences whose effects the researcher is attempting to study. However, this approach does have the major advantage of uncovering causality, in the sense that one or more features can be found that really "determine" buying behavior. The same cannot be said for the other approaches discussed in this article. A survey article that reports several specific findings relative to determinant attitudes is the one by Holloway and White.13 Discussion Each of the methods presented in this paper (direct questioning, indirect questioning, and observation and experiment) has some limitations, depending upon how each is used. In particular, any of the methods which are not used in a situation 12William D. Wells and Leonard A. Lo Sciuto, "Direct Observation of Purchasing Behavior," Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 3 (August, 1966), pp. 227233. 13Robert Holloway and Tod White, "Advancing the Experimental Method in Marketing," Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 1 (February, 1964), pp. 25-29.

19 19

involving the actual choice among brands must rely upon what the respondent says, and what she says might be quite different from what she actually does in the buying situation. (Of course, some of the methods could also include the consideration of what the respondent does or has done.) Perhaps the major problem is that it is possible for an investigator to use many of the approaches discussed in this paper without discovering the absolute level of acceptability of the various product or service characteristics being considered. For example, in the case of the savings and loan illustration, respondents were not asked directly for their evaluations of each savings and loan association in terms of the various attributes being rated, nor were they asked for their evaluations of savings and loans as a whole on each attribute. Therefore, had the public been generally disenchanted with savings and loan associations in terms of one or more features or services, this fact would not have emerged from the study. (If motivation research does what it claims to do, it would uncover the absolute levels of acceptability of the various product attributes, although many times not on a quantitative basis.) It might often be important for manufacturers to pay more attention to determinant attitudes among products in addition to among brands, as every product line is always vulnerable to another which improves upon some feature that may not be determinant among existing brands but could easily be determinant among products. Therefore, an investigator interested in identifying attributes which are determinant for the choice among brands should always ask for the absolute level of attribute acceptance for each of the brands (or for the single brand) evaluated. In this way, all brands may rank particularly low in a certain feature (for example, many of the two-thirds of the U.S. public who have never been in an airplane might consider all airlines as being equally unsafe). The researcher should, therefore, also ask for ratings of different products which might compete with the original product class. The methodology will remain unchanged, but the grouping of competitors is changed. There is even the possibility that all brands of an existing product might be rated reasonably high in, for example, "ease of preparation," but some substitute product might rate even higher in this feature and thus would attract consumers on the basis of this greater convenience. This is a further reason for comparisons among various alternative products. It should be noted that the "dual questioning" method is something like a shortcut to regression analysis, in the sense that respondents are asked to "tell" which attributes are important and different in their opinion. However, an investigator often does not know whether a given level of difference or importance is of major consequence without some set of external standards. At least regression analysis

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20
lends statistical significance tests to what direct questioning must do with a basically "eyeball" technique, and, of course, a significant correlation would not emerge unless a feature were both important (related to some criterion) and differentiated (with enough "variation" in ratings to allow "co-variation"), and thus correlation with some criterion. There is always the danger of implying or in-

1968 Journal Journal of October, 1968 Marketing, October, of Marketing,

ferring causality from the results of any of the comethods discussed in this article-particularly variate analysis. Results from direct or indirect questioning must be subjected to experimental or other validation for greater assurance that causal relationships do indeed exist between attitudes identified as "determinant" and the actual choice, decision, or action.

MARKETING MEMOM
Evaluating Retail Salesmen Is Far From Foolproof . . .
. . . Retail salesmen cannot, and should not, be held wholly accountable for the results of all their sales floor behavior. When setting standards of performance and establishing techniques of evaluation, we must recognize that the salesman does not operate alone. He works in a multidimensional sales environment in which he and the potential customer are the important behavioral factors. When the salesman is compatible with his customer and the store's merchandising and operating policies, his chances of success are much greater than when he is not. However, these relationships must be situationally determined. They are not to be found among the pages of traditional sales management literature. -James C. Cotham III, "The Case For Personal Selling, Some Retailing Myths Exploded," Business Horizons, Vol. XI (April, 1968), pp. 75-81, at p. 80.

Change and Our Values . . .

As the world and society are seen increasingly as processes in constant change under the impact of new technology, value analysis will have to concentrateon process, too: on the process of valuation in the individual and on the process of value formation and value change in the society. The emphasis will have to shift, in other words, from values to valuing. For it is not particular familiar values as such that are valuable, but the human ability to extract values from experience and to use and cherish them. And that value is not threatened by technology; it is only challenged by it to remain adequate to human experience by guiding us in the reformulation of our ends to fit our new means and opportunities. -Emmanuel G. Mesthene, "How Technology Will Shape The Future," Science, Vol. 161 (July 12, 1968), pp. 135-143, at p. 141.

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