Abstract
The Means-End Chain Theory is a commonly used approach in marketing that aims to understand how consumers make decisions about marketing offerings by examining their thought processes. The theory is built on a three-level hierarchical structure that encompasses the attributes of a product or service, the benefits derived from these attributes, and the values associated with these benefits. Since the Means-End Chain Theory reflects the personal views of consumers, researchers need to combine and/or compare individuals’ hierarchical value maps to gain a better understanding of the market. The main issue here is how to measure the similarity of consumers’ means-end chain models and consequently how to compare them. There are a limited number of studies in the literature that address this issue, however they have notable shortcomings. In this study, a new method is proposed that considers all possible combinations of direct and indirect relationships between the abstraction levels (attributes, benefits, and values) and the weights of these combinations to calculate the distances (i.e. dissimilarities) between consumers’ hierarchical value maps. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by an example.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems - Intelligence and Sustainable Future Proceedings of the INFUS 2023 Conference |
Editors | Cengiz Kahraman, Irem Ucal Sari, Basar Oztaysi, Sezi Cevik Onar, Selcuk Cebi, A. Çağrı Tolga |
Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH |
Pages | 152-159 |
Number of pages | 8 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783031397738 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Event | Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems - Intelligence and Sustainable Future Proceedings of the INFUS 2023 Conference - Istanbul, Turkey Duration: 22 Aug 2023 → 24 Aug 2023 |
Publication series
Name | Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems |
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Volume | 758 LNNS |
ISSN (Print) | 2367-3370 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 2367-3389 |
Conference
Conference | Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems - Intelligence and Sustainable Future Proceedings of the INFUS 2023 Conference |
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Country/Territory | Turkey |
City | Istanbul |
Period | 22/08/23 → 24/08/23 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Keywords
- Hierarchical Value Map
- Indirect Relationship Analysis
- Means-End Chain Theory
- Similarity Analysis
- Weighting