Editor's note: Betsy Goodnow is president of Market ACTION Software, Clarendon Hills, Illinois.
A promotion for a brand is more effective if it appeals to the motivations driving purchase behavior. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate a scientific approach to identifying motivations for buying a specific brand. An example shows how to elicit motivations with in-depth interviews and how to summarize them using correspondence analysis. Instead of using a means-end chain, this new approach to laddering relates brands, features, benefits, and values using a perceptual map.
One of the goals of marketing research is to identify motivations for purchasing a brand. These motivations are the "hot buttons" that drive purchase behavior. Promotions that appeal to these motivations are more effective in increasing sales than promotions that merely emphasize the features or benefits of the brand. Motivations indicate why the brand is valuable to the user- why he is willing to spend money on one brand rather than on another.
However, motivational research is difficult to conduct. Most respondents are not able to verbalize their subconscious motivations for purchasing a brand without structured probing by an interviewer. Although unstructured interviews may elicit reasons for purchasing, these reasons may be colored by social expectations and may not be their real motivations for purchasing the brand. Furthermore, such open-ended responses elude objective analysis. The analyst's subjective view of reality may color their interpretation of the responses.
The purpose of this article is to explain how to disclose motivations for buying a brand and how to scientifically analyze the responses. It explains structured procedures for eliciting purchase motivations, coding these responses, aggregating and cross tabulating the data, visually summarizing relationships in the table, and interpreting the results.
Data collection
Motivations are revealed through structured in-depth interviews involving triadic comparisons of competitive brands. The client can easily identify the three to twelve brands that compete most strongly with his brand. The results are more valid if only the strongest competitors are included in the analysis, if the respondents are familiar with all of the competitive brands, and if a hundred or more respondents are interviewed.
The objective of the interviewing is to identify the values, the underlying motivations for buying the brand. Salient features are the brand's comparative advantages, benefits are instrumental uses of the brand, and values are the life style identity or basic needs that are satisfied by the brand. Subsequent stages of the interview delve progressively deeper into the respondent's subconscious.
The interviewing technique is called laddering. Each respondent is asked to compare three brands that have been assigned to the respondent on a random basis. The respondents decide which two of the three brands are most similar and then describe why they are similar yet different from the third. Then each respondent explains the benefits derived from each feature and why each benefit is personally valuable to him. The interviewer keeps probing until the respondent has nothing more to add. The analyst compiles the open-ended responses in a structured manner. Each response is classified as either a brand, feature, benefit, or value. Similar responses to each of the four variables are coded as belonging to the same category.
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The coded responses are then aggregated and crosstabulated as shown in Table I. The table links brands with features, features with benefits, and benefits with values, but does not directly link brands with values. However, correspondence analysis of the table does link brands with values, thus revealing the underlying motivations for purchasing each brand.
Correspondence analysis
The object of correspondence analysis is to merge row and column percents so they correspond visually with a perceptual map. The positions of the row and column categories on the map represents their relationships so that the closer the categories the more they are related.
For example, in the MapWise program for correspondence analysis the actual distances between and among all categories best summarizes their relationships. Since correspondence analysis can relate categories of more than one variable, it can relate brands, features, benefits, and values on the same perceptual map. Rather than linking these variables in a means-end chain, they are linked by their proximity in space. For example, a brand's features are near the brand, a feature's benefits are near the feature, and the values derived from a benefit are near the benefit. Likewise, the relative proximity of brands and motivations reveals the motivations driving the purchase of each brand.
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The solution to correspondence analysis shown in Figure I summarizes the relationships among features and benefits. The first axis explains two-thirds of the variance or relationships among the categories and the second axis explains the rest. Since the solution is significant, the correspondence map best distinguishes relationships among categories of the features and benefits. The test for point stability indicates that the positions of these categories on the map are stable.
The categories of the other variables, brands and values, are overlaid on the solution by their relationships with either features or benefits through crosstabulation. The relative proximity of the categories on the correspondence map represents the strength of their relationships.
The research indicates that the features of the brands are as follows: Brand A has quality, Brand B is guaranteed, and Brands C and D are stylish. Evidently, the benefit of quality is status, the benefit of a guarantee is a lower risk, and the benefit of style is conformity. Overlaying values on the map discloses that the value of status is leadership, the value of low risk is safety, and the value of conformity is love. The motivations for buying each brand are as follows: buyers of Brand A seek leadership, buyers of Brand B seek safety, and buyers of Brands C and D seek love.
Summary
This hypothetical example demonstrates a scientific approach to identifying motivations for buying a specific brand. In-depth interviews can elicit the salient features through triadic comparisons of competitive brands and probes of the benefits and values derived from these features. Responses to
these interviews can be classified, coded, aggregated, crosstabulated, and visually summarized on a correspondence map. Interpretation of the map reveals the underlying motivations, the "hot buttons" for buying the client's brand. Promotions that appeal to these "hot buttons" are effective in influencing people to purchase the brand. O
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