The means-end chain information is contained in consumers’ memories. As a rule, however, consumers are unable to access such information in an articulated manner when it is required. A suitable research strategy is needed to analyse it. Similarly, the motives for buying products cannot be obtained by direct asking, as in most cases consumers are not aware of their decision-making process nor are they able to perceive naturally the reasons which have prompted them to choose a product to the exclusion of another. An in-depth interviewing technique, laddering, is thus required to learn how consumers perceive products and what significance they attribute to them.
This technique, which aims at obtaining cognitive maps, or Hierarchical Value Maps (HVMs), is the most widely used method to uncover consumers’ cognitive structures (Reynolds and Gutman, 1988), so much so that it is sometimes confused with means-end chain analysis.
The laddering technique is intended to reveal how the respondents link product attributes to more abstract consequences and values (Reynolds and Whitlark, 1995).
It consists of three fundamental steps(2):
- elicitation of salient attributes;
- data collection through the actual laddering interview;
- analysis of results.
During the interview consumers are prompted to reflect on their purchase decisions.
Once the significant attributes have been elicited using one or more of the available techniques, the laddering interview proper is performed. This method has the advantage of “inducing” consumers to reflect and reason on attributes-consequences-values relationships. To identify of the connections between attributes, consequences and values, respondents are asked to trace the network of associations in the means-end chain by answering repeatedly a simple question: “why do you think this attribute (or consequence/value) is important to you?”. The researcher, by this sequence of in-depth probes, thus identifies one or more ladders for each consumer by revealing what product attributes mean to the consumer in terms of consequences and values (Gutman, 1982).
Application of the laddering method thus allows to identify the network of connections, HVMs, which drive consumer behaviour toward products and/or services, and to identify the barriers preventing the greater diffusion of certain goods and/or services. The links which consumers consider personally significant, and which enable the maps to be derived, can be addressed in detail also in the light of different demographic and socio-economic characteristics, or of any other features that may be relevant to the identification of different motivational drives for specific market segments.
The phase of data collection through laddering interviews is followed by four phases of analysis: content analysis and coding of data, derivation of the implication matrix, construction of HVMs, and analysis of results proper. MECanalyst considerably facilitates the processing of data both in the phase of their coding and in the final three phases.
After map construction, the information contained therein can be used to improve the positioning of existing products, to innovate products/services, or to define appropriate communications strategies.
