On the Separability of Weights and Brand Values: Issues and Empirical Results

Abstract

A central issue in research on multiattribute decision structures is the relationship between attribute weights and variation in brand scores. Conventional wisdom postulates that, as the variation or range of levels on an attribute increases, so will the relative weight the attribute receives in decisions. The results presented in this research do not confirm the conventional wisdom. In particular, subjects were capable of cognitively standardizing scores on each attribute so that judged utilities reflected an attribute's psychological importance, not the statistical variation in its scores. This result and those reported for several other tests appear to be promising for efforts that emphasize structural applications of multiattribute models for marketing communications strategy.