Various theories suggest that the perceived similarity of objects facilitates the transfer of knowledge, affect, and intentions from one object to the other. However, there is disagreement as to the meaning of similarity and how it should be operationalized among these various theories, and no effort to relate these various measures to one another exists in the literature. In an empirical study, the authors examine the relationships among measures of product similarity in three different contexts: (1) goal-congruent products, (2) moderately goal-incongruent products, and (3) extremely goal-incongruent products. The results of exploratory factor analyses revealed that perceived similarity is a multidimensional construct and that the number and structure of these dimensions of similarity are different when products differ in their degrees of goal congruency. Structural equation analyses of the measures based on a second sample confirmed the structure obtained in the earlier exploratory analyses and demonstrated that brand attitudes and purchase intention exhibit different relationships to the underlying dimensions of similarity in the goal-congruent and goal-incongruent conditions, consistent with expectations based on the theory of goal-derived categorization. The authors discuss implications of these findings for theory and practice.
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