TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding how Product Attributes Influence Product Categorization
T2 - Development and Validation of Fuzzy Set-Based Measures of Gradedness in Product Categories
AU - Viswanathan, Madhubalan
AU - Childers, Terry L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Partial funding for this project was obtained by the first author through a grant by the Campus Research Board, University of Illinois, and by the second author through grants by the Center for Research in Marketing and McKnight-BER Fund, University of Minnesota. The authors thank Barbara Loken, Joann Peck, Dhruv Grewal, Jim Harris, Manoj Hastak, Jim Hess, George John, Don Kleinmuntz, Kent Monroe, Jose Antonio Rosa, D. Sudharshan, and Brian Wansink for their comments on previous versions of this article. The authors especially thank Barbara Loken for providing study materials from prior research and Mark Bergen and Shantanu Dutta for their involvement in related research. To interact with colleagues on specific articles in this issue, see “Feedback” on the JMR Web site at www.ama.org/pubs/jmr .
Publisher Copyright:
© 1999 American Marketing Association.
PY - 1999/2
Y1 - 1999/2
N2 - Products vary in the degree to which they are members of product categories. Understanding how product attributes influence product categorization is important for marketing decisions about product development, brand extension, and product positioning. Existing attribute-level measures of product attitude emphasize evaluation rather than categorization. Measures of category membership either are at the overall product level or emphasize feature-based attributes, whereas product attributes are often continuous in nature. A comprehensive approach for conceptualizing product categorization is provided by fuzzy set theory, with its basic postulate that no clear boundaries exist between members and nonmembers of a fuzzy set. The authors conceptualize product categories as fuzzy sets in which products have degrees of membership along specific attributes, argued to arise as a result of the degree to which a product possesses an attribute. Two fuzzy set-based measures of category membership are developed that assess gradedness of category membership at the attribute level, which is then combined across attributes to reach overall measures of gradedness for a product. The results of a study demonstrate the validity of these measures and illustrate important attribute-level analyses that are not possible with existing approaches.
AB - Products vary in the degree to which they are members of product categories. Understanding how product attributes influence product categorization is important for marketing decisions about product development, brand extension, and product positioning. Existing attribute-level measures of product attitude emphasize evaluation rather than categorization. Measures of category membership either are at the overall product level or emphasize feature-based attributes, whereas product attributes are often continuous in nature. A comprehensive approach for conceptualizing product categorization is provided by fuzzy set theory, with its basic postulate that no clear boundaries exist between members and nonmembers of a fuzzy set. The authors conceptualize product categories as fuzzy sets in which products have degrees of membership along specific attributes, argued to arise as a result of the degree to which a product possesses an attribute. Two fuzzy set-based measures of category membership are developed that assess gradedness of category membership at the attribute level, which is then combined across attributes to reach overall measures of gradedness for a product. The results of a study demonstrate the validity of these measures and illustrate important attribute-level analyses that are not possible with existing approaches.
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U2 - 10.1177/002224379903600106
DO - 10.1177/002224379903600106
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107986752
SN - 0022-2437
VL - 36
SP - 75
EP - 94
JO - Journal of Marketing Research
JF - Journal of Marketing Research
IS - 1
ER -