Laddering in the practice of marketing research: barriers and solutions

Abstract

PurposeThe paper seeks to present discussion on laddering application in the practice of marketing, considering both academic and market researches.Design/methodology/approachIt provides summary points of laddering as a qualitative research technique and the importance it can have in better understanding behaviour.FindingsThe paper argues that laddering is a useful and powerful technique but still underused by scholars and practitioners. The authors consider that the main apparent barriers precluding its proper use can be related to the following aspects: time‐consuming and expensive interviews; artificial set of answers; researcher biases; and simplistic analysis of the results.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to a better practice of laddering since it highlights its limitations and suggests alternatives to cope with them.

Understanding consumers’ cognitive structures with regard to high pressure processing: A means-end chain application to the chilled ready meals category

“…The latter most frequently involves presenting respondents with products to choose or sort/rank, in order to uncover preference-based distinctions between products, which then form the basis for the process of probing for attribute, consequence and value linkages (Veludo de Oliveira, Ikeda, & Campomar, 2006). It is arguably the 'best starting point' for laddering interviews in terms of its closeness to consumers' real life decision-making processes (Bech-Larsen & Nielsen, 1999).…”

Cognitive structures based on culinary success factors in the development of new dishes by Japanese chefs at fine dining restaurants

“…Laddering is an individual interview technique employed in order to understand how consumers translate the characteristics of a given product and follows MEC theory [29]. Generally, this involves the interviewer asking a series of directed questions such as "Why is this important to you?"…”

Using Means-end Chain Analysis to Reveal Consumers’ Motivation for Buying Local Foods: An Exploratory Study

“…Would uncover a complex pictorial representation of how consumers perceived and linked the A-C-V (Russell et al 2004a Hard laddering Advantages Produced more ladders (Grunert and Grunert 1995), efficiency in data collection (quicker and cheaper) (Grunert and Grunert 1995;Botsschen et al 1999), suitable for investigating the strong links within the linkages (Russell et al 2004b), and minimize researchers' influence (Grunert and Grunert 1995;Veludo-de-Oliveira 2006) Challenges The consistency of the codings' interpretation among the respondents was questionable. There is a possible effect of bias for the abstract concepts and cross-cultural applications.…”

“…A Hierarchical Value Map (HVM) is the name given to the graph that is formed from the various 'ladders,' representing the aggregate connections of A, C and V (Reynolds and Gutman 1988). However, some barriers were found that preclude MEC's use, including it being time-consuming, it requires expensive interviews, and artificial sets of answers and researchers' biases that demand a high level of expertise from the interviewers (Veludo-de-Oliveira et al 2006). MEC theory has previously and exclusively only been applied in developing countries.…”