Ravindra Chitturi, Rajagopal Raghunathan, and Vijay Mahajan
Executive Summary
In making choices, consumers must often trade off one type of attribute dimensions for another. For example, in choosing a car, a consumer may need to sacrifice safety for price, fuel economy for horsepower, and so forth. This article examines how consumers' react to situations involving trade-offs between the functional attributes of products (e.g., the battery life of a cell phone) and their aesthetic or hedonic ones (e.g., the appearance of a cell phone). The recent trend toward better design in consumer durables (from toothbrushes to laptops) makes it particularly important for marketers to understand the relative weight that consumers place on functional attributes in relation to hedonic ones and the mechanisms underlying such weighting. This article explores both these issues.
Consistent with what is known as the principle of precedence, the authors find that consumers tend to attach greater importance to functionality (over hedonics) up to the point at which a "required" level of functionality is met. Thus, for example, a consumer shopping for a cell phone with at least an eight-hour battery life will choose an option that offers this level of battery life over ones that do not, even if this option is much worse looking than the alternatives. However, the authors also find that after the required level of functionality is met, consumers shift focus almost entirely to the hedonic aspects. Thus, in the preceding example, if all available cell phones exceeded the eight-hour battery limit, the phone that looks best will be chosen, regardless of the differences among the options in terms of battery life. The authors call this finding the "principle of hedonic dominance" to convey the idea that after a required level of functionality is met, hedonic aspects drive consumer choice.
The studies help explain why consumers behave in accordance with the principles of precedence and hedonic dominance. In short, these patterns of choices are motivated by the desire to reduce feeling negative and to enhance feeling positive, respectively. Specifically, when only one option in a choice set meets functional cutoffs, the thought of choosing any other option, however superior in terms of hedonics, evokes intense guilt and anxiety, spurring the consumer to choose the option that does meet functional cutoffs. In contrast, when all the available options meet or exceed functional cutoffs ,so the consumer can rest assured that the required level of functionality is guaranteed, the consumer is excited by the thought of choosing the best-looking alternative (even if it barely meets functional cutoffs and the other options far exceed it).
The findings also indicate that when consumers do not have a required level of functionality in mind, his or her decision-making "mode" determines preferences. Specifically, when the consumer is in the mode of making a choice, he or she selects the functionally superior option because of the anxiety/guilt evoked associated with choosing an option that may later turn out to be functionally inadequate. Conversely, if the consumer is in an "evaluative" mode (as would be the case when assessing the prices of products), he or she is likely to prefer the hedonically superior option because of the excitement generated by this alternative.
The findings suggest that marketers can benefit from ensuring that their products deliver certain "minimal" level of functionality first; however, they also suggest that after this level of functionality is met, marketers should focus almost exclusively on enhancing the hedonic appeal of their offerings. The findings also suggest that in contexts in which consumers are in an "evaluative" mode rather than in a "choice" mode (as would be the case when products are displayed by brand rather than by attribute), hedonically superior products are preferred.
Biography
Ravindra Chitturi earned his PhD from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and is currently employed as Assistant Professor of Marketing in the College of Business and Economics at Lehigh University. Ravi's work draws on theories from design, innovation, emotions, decision theory, and marketing to document and explain interrelationships between affect and design. Ravi's work has been accepted for publication at Journal of Marketing Research and is under review at the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Retailing, and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
Rajagopal Raghunathan earned his PhD from the Stern School of Business at New York University and is currently employed as Assistant Professor of Marketing in the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Raj's work juxtaposes theories from psychology, behavioral sciences, decision theory, and marketing to document and explain interrelationships between affect and consumption behavior. Raj's work has been published in top marketing and psychology journals, such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Raj was recognized as a Marketing Science Young Scholar in 2005 for his contributions to the field of marketing.
Vijay Mahajan, former dean of the Indian School of Business, holds the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business in McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. He has received several lifetime achievement awards for both his academic and his nonacademic contributions, including the Churchill Award and the Parlin Award from the American Marketing Association and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He is currently listed by ISIHighlyCited.com as being one of the most highly cited researchers in Business and Economics. His recent book on developing countries, The 86% Solution was released by The Wharton School Publishing.
Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. XLIV, No. 4, November 2007
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