Means-End Chain Approach (MEC) and Laddering Interviews

Traditional consumer research have a long history of devising methods for investigating how consumers relate their understanding of products, and of the world in general, to their own goals, attitudes and desires. Whereas the means-end chain approach is a theory about how such relations are arranged in the minds of consumers, the laddering interview is a method for investigating actual instances of such ‘mental relations’. The reason for grouping these two approaches in this paper is that they are often used together (laddering as a tool for eliciting means-end chains) and because they are based on the same idea of mental hierarchical value systems.

Means-end chain theory assumes that consumption relevant cognition is organized in the minds of consumers as mental/associative links between means (products/product attributes) and ends (goals). There are several methods for doing so (laddering, as mentioned, is one), but the general procedure for all of them is the following. First of all, the researcher needs to find out which products attributes that are salient to the consumer. For instance, the attributes ‘containing vitamins and minerals’, ‘bought at fishmonger’ and ‘expensive’ might be prominent in certain consumer’s perception of fresh fish (Nielsen, Sørensen, & Grunert, 1997). Subsequently, the consequences of these attributes must be uncovered. For instance, a perceived consequence of ‘bought at fishmonger’ is that it is time consuming. Finally, to discover the import of such consequences to consumers, it is necessary to understand how they resonate or conflict with various consumer goals. ‘Time-consuming’, for instance, conflicts with consumer goals like ‘spending time with family’.

When laddering is used in the elicitation of such cognitive structure, the interview data is usually inserted in a computer program that produces a so called hierarchical value maps showing the various links (ladders) between attributes and values at different levels of abstraction. This procedure, which is based on qualitative interviewing, creates a base for further representative and qualitative validation of the various ladders.