When and How Brands Affect Attribute Weights in Consumer Decision Processes

This research investigates when and how brands influence attribute importance weights. Most past studies modelling consumer decision processes treated the brand of a product as an attribute parallel to the price, color, or size of a product; and as a result, those studies assigned an equal (i.e., non-contingent) importance weight across brands for each attribute. In contrast, we introduce a brand-contingent attribute-weighting process, in which brand is a higher-order construct that influences attribute importance. We present a multi-level choice model in which the importance weight of an attribute can vary across brands. We then estimate the model using real purchase data and survey data from airline industry. We find that attribute importance weights are contingent upon two aspects of a brand—the perceived relative position of the brand and consumers’ brand usage experiences. Specifically, when consumers perceive a brand to be inferior to its competitors in a given attribute, they generally place greater weight on that attribute for that brand. In contrast, when consumers perceive a brand to be superior to its competitors in a given attribute, only consumers with extensive brand usage experiences place greater weight on that attribute for that brand.Our findings provide managerial insights on brand positioning and segmentation strategies using consumers’ brand usage experiences. We advance the literature on consumer decision processes by modeling an attribute-weighting process that is contingent upon brands. We model this process based on consumer behavior theories and estimate the model using real market data.