Meaningful Brands from Meaningless Differentiation: The Dependence on Irrelevant Attributes

Carpenter, Gregory S.; Glazer, Rashi; Nakamoto, Kent

doi:10.2307/3152221

Cited by 215 publications

(147 citation statements)

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“…First, research on trivial attributes has shown that offering these attributes increase brands' buying likelihood by giving consumers reasons or rational for choice (Brown & Carpenter, 2000). Interestingly, even after consumers realized that the brand differentiation by trivial attribute didn't create any meaningful differentiation, their brand choice was the same (Carpenter et al, 1994). Second, Miljkovic, Gong, and Lehrke (2009) find that this trivial attribute effect on brand differentiation depends on the choice set.…”

Section: Problem Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While research on trivial attributes so far has mainly focused on different consumer goods including down jackets, compact disc players, pasta (Carpenter et al, 1994), coffee, and cologne (Brown & Carpenter, 2000), we are not aware of any research that has investigated trivial attributes in a service context. In our efforts to understand if using trivial attributes would have a differential effect on hedonic vs. utilitarian services, results suggest that consumers use different types of information evaluating hedonic vs. utilitarian services (Batra & Ahtola, 1991;Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982) when trivial attributes are evaluated.…”

Section: Implications and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consumers treat this trivial information in the advantage of brands that offer them even when they are informed before decision-making about the triviality (Carpenter et al, 1994). Brown and Carpenter (2000) explain this advantage with the reasons based account.…”

Section: Trivial Attribute Effect On Service Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

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Marketing Strategy for Unusual Brand Differentiation: Trivial Attribute Effect

Dalman¹,

Min²

2014

IJMS

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This research investigates that brand differentiation creating superior values can be achieved not only by adding meaningful attributes but also meaningless attributes, which is called "trivial attribute effect." Two studies provided empirical evidences as following; first, trivial attribute effect creates a strong brand differentiation even after subjects realize that trivial attribute has no value. Second, trivial attribute effect is more pronounced in hedonic service category compared to the utilitarian category. Last, the amount of willingness to pay is higher when trivial attribute is presented and evaluated in joint evaluation mode than separate evaluation mode. Finally, we conclude with discussion and provide suggestions for further research.

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Section: Problem Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Marketing Strategy for Unusual Brand Differentiation: Trivial Attribute Effect

Dalman¹,

Min²

2014

IJMS

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“…In principle, attribute importance should not affect whether the respondent chooses the attribute on either occasion, because an association is an association no matter how trivial the attribute (Carpenter, Glazer, & Nakamoto, 1994). However, attribute importance may "focus" the respondent to choose with greater consistency.…”

Section: Attribute Importancementioning

confidence: 99%

The low stability of brand-attribute associations is partly due to market research methodology

Dolničar

Rossiter

2008

International Journal of Research in Marketing

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Using an experiment built into a longitudinal survey, we demonstrate that the low stability of consumers' brand-attribute associations (see Rungie et al., 2005) can be partly explained by the prevailing methods used in market research, which can often lead consumers to construct temporary associations. To increase the proportion of stable brand-attribute associations, we recommend the following improvements in market research methods: use of a shorter, brand-prompted attribute association task; inclusion of an "don't know this brand" option to isolate ratings of brands unknown to the individual; omission of the standard instruction to guess when uncertain; and, in cross-cultural studies, translation of instructions and attribute descriptions into appropriate first languages. Even with these improvements, however, the maximal stability of associations that brands can achieve is less than 100% after correcting for methodological influences. This imperfect stability may mean that consumers learn brand-specific attribute associations that are temporary but stable enough to lead them to try or re-try the brand, after which consumers replace the specific brand associations with a summary brand attitude. Disciplines Business | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication DetailsThis article was originally published as Dolnicar, S, Rossiter, JR, The low stability of brand-attribute associations is partly due to market research methodology. Using an experiment built into a longitudinal survey, we demonstrate that the low stability of consumers' brand-attribute associations (see Rungie et al., 2005) can be partly explained by the prevailing methods used in market research, which can often lead consumers to construct temporary associations. To increase the proportion of stable brand-attribute associations, we recommend the following improvements in market research methods: use of a shorter, brand-prompted attribute association task;inclusion of an "don't know this brand" option to isolate ratings of brands unknown to the individual; omission of the standard instruction to guess when uncertain; and, in cross-cultural studies, translation of instructions and attribute descriptions into appropriate first languages. Even with these improvements, however, the maximal stability of associations that brands can achieve is less than 100% after correcting for methodological influences. This imperfect stability may mean that consumers learn brand-specific attribute associations that are temporary but stable enough to lead them to try or re-try the brand, after which consumers replace the specific brand associations with a summary brand attitude.3

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“…tests alone (Carpenter, Glazer, and Nakamoto 1994;Trout and Rivkin 2000). If two products are physically identical, except perhaps for brand labels, utility maximizing consumers should be relatively indifferent between them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brand Competition in CPG Industries: Sustaining Large Local Advantages with Little Product Differentiation

Bronnenberg

2006

SSRN Journal

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In direct competition between national brands of consumer packaged goods (CPG), one brand often has a large local share advantage over the other despite that the products are similar. I present an explanation for these large and persistent advantages in the context of local competition on perceived quality or brand image. The main result of the analysis is a relation between varying degrees of horizontal product differentiation and local share advantages. Namely, I find that local share advantages can be sustained especially if competing brands are objectively similar. Conversely, local share advantages can not be sustained if brands are dissimilar. This paper provides two independent intuitions for this result. First, if brands are objectively similar, different levels of investments in local quality perceptions can co-exist in the same market. Specifically, if it pays to do so, early movers will invest in high perceived quality. Late movers have reduced incentives to invest because of subsequent demand sharing and price competition. Second, if the perceived quality advantages are geographically distributed across competitors, the above argument is reinforced by multimarket contact. Even if local "brand building" is free, firms have an incentive to sustain asymmetric market shares because, holding total demand constant, multimarket profits are increasing in share variation, i.e., monopoly power, across regions. This increase is steeper when the products are similar, because price competition looms large.JEL Classification: L11, L15, L22, L66, M30, R12

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Meaningful Brands from Meaningless Differentiation: The Dependence on Irrelevant Attributes

Cited by 215 publications

References 0 publications

Marketing Strategy for Unusual Brand Differentiation: Trivial Attribute Effect

Marketing Strategy for Unusual Brand Differentiation: Trivial Attribute Effect

The low stability of brand-attribute associations is partly due to market research methodology

Brand Competition in CPG Industries: Sustaining Large Local Advantages with Little Product Differentiation

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