Product importance has been separated into two distinct components — enduring and instrumental — and empirical tests have been conducted regarding the relative importance of each component in explaining behavior. This article analyzes more completely the instrumental importance construct by accounting for the existence of differences in products ofa similar nature. The logit analysis is conducted on a set ofair travelers. The empirical results suggest that instrumental importance as a construct must be decomposed in order to gain a better understanding of consumer choice behavior.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bloch, Peter H. and Marsha L Richins (1983), "A Theoretical Model for the Study of Product Importance Perceptions," Journal of Marketing47 (Summer), 69-81.
2.
Bowen, Lawrence and Steven H. Chaffee ( 1974),"Product Involvement and Pertinent Advertising Appeals," Journalism Quarterly51 (Winter), 613-621.
3.
Bruning, Edward R and Larry E. Oberdick (1982), "Market Structure and Economic Performance in the Commuter Airline Industry," Transportation Journal21 (Spring), 76-87.
4.
Clarke, Keith and Russell Belk (1979), "The Effects of Product Involvement and Task Definition on Anticipated Consumer Effort," in Advances in Consumer Research , W. L. Wilkie, ed., vol. 6, Ann Arbor: Association for Consumer Research, pp. 313-318.
5.
Cohen, Joel B. and Marvin E. Goldberg ( 1970), "The Dissonance Model in Post-Decision Product Evaluation," Journal of Marketing Research7 (August), 315-321.
6.
Howard, John and Jagdish N. Sheth (1969), The Theory of Buyer Behavior , New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
7.
Hu, Michael Y. and Edward R Bruning (1984), "A Comparison of Enduring and Instrumental Product Importance in Predicting Choice," Proceedings of the Midwest Marketing Association (May), 42-49.
8.
Jones, J. Richard and Sheila Cooke (1981)," A Performance Evaluation of Commuter Airlines: The Passenger's View," Proceedings of the Transportation Research Forum 22, 248-256.
9.
Landon, E. Laird (1977), "A Sex-Role Explanation of Purchase Intention Differences of Consumers Who are High and Low in Need for Achievement," in Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference, M. Venkatesan, ed., Chicago: Association for Consumer Research, pp. 1-8.
10.
Rothschild, Michael L. (1975), "Involvement as a Determinant in Decision-Making Styles," in Combined Proceedings, E. M. Mazze, ed., Chicago: American Marketing Association, pp. 216-220.
11.
Rothschild, Michael L (1979a), "Marketing Communications in Non-Business Situations ," Journal of Marketing42 (Spring), 11-20.
12.
Rothschild, Michael L. (1979b), Advertising Strategies for High and Low Involvement Situations, in Attitude Research Playsfor High Stakes, J. Maloney and B. Silverman , eds., Chicago: American Marketing Association , pp. 74-93.
13.
Summers, John O. (1970), "The Identity of Women's Clothing Fashion Opinion Leaders," Journal of Marketing Research7 (May), 178-185.
14.
Tigert, Douglas J., Lawrence J. King, and Charles W. King (1976), "Fashion Involvement and Buying Behavior," in Advances in Consumer Research, B. B. Anderson, ed., vol. 3, Chicago: Association for Consumer Research , pp. 46-52.
