Brand familiarity and tasting inconjoint analysis

An experimental study with Croatian beerconsumers

Marija CerjakDepartment of Agricultural Marketing,

Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Rainer HaasInstitute for Marketing and Innovation,

University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria, and

Damir KovacicDepartment of Agricultural Marketing,

Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

AbstractPurpose – The aims of this paper is to determine, via an empirical study of beer consumers inCroatia, the influence of tasting on the validity of conjoint analysis (CA) under presence of familiar orunfamiliar brands.

Design/methodology/approach – The research comprised a face-to-face survey with 403 beerconsumers. The respondents were divided into four groups regarding CA experiment(familiar/unfamiliar beer brand in combination with presence or absence of beer tasting). CAvalidity was measured with five criteria: face validity, convergent validity, internal validity, predictivevalidity and subjective evaluation of conjoint task. In addition to the CA experiment, a structuredquestionnaire was used consisting of a few questions regarding respondents’ socio-economiccharacteristics, beer purchasing, and consuming behaviour.

Findings – The research results confirmed that tasting as an additional presentation method hassignificant influence on validity of CA. However, the results of the study indicate that tasting shouldbe used as a stimulus presentation method for CA with food and beverage products/brands, which areunfamiliar to the consumers. When testing familiar brands and brands with established perceptions,simpler and less expensive verbal stimulus presentation can be used.

Practical implications – According to the research results, it could be concluded that whenperforming CA with strong familiar brands, it is not necessary to use CA with tasting since tastingincreases research complexity and costs and it does not achieve better results. However, tasting as astimuli presentation method gives better results than pure verbal CA in the case of unfamiliar brands.

Originality/value – The paper is one of the first to deal with tasting as a presentation method inconjoint analysis and its results have direct implications for the future use of CA with food andbeverages.

Keywords Brand awareness, Food and drink products, Beer, Croatia, Sensory perception

Paper type Research paper

1. IntroductionConjoint analysis (CA) is a common marketing research method for analysingconsumer trade-offs (Carroll and Green, 1995; Krapp and Sattler, 2001; Green et al.,2001; Brusch and Baier, 2002; Toubia, 2001). It is used so frequently because it

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0007-070XDOI 10.1108/00070701011052664

produces fairly realistic imitations of real market choice (Huber, 1987; Brusch andBaier, 2002) and provides good estimations of consumers’ preferences. Furthermore,“the popularity of conjoint measurement appears to derive, at least in part, from itspresumed superiority in (predictive) validity over less expensive techniques such asself-explication approaches” (Leight et al., 1984; taken from Krapp and Sattler, 2001).

Because of its practical importance, numerous researchers have shown an interest inenhancing the degree of task realism in the evaluation process during CA (Green andHelsen, 1989). Research efforts in the past have focused on three main aspects:

(1) Realistic definition of attributes and attribute levels.

(2) Improvement in the evaluation procedure so that it resembles actual purchasedecisions.

(3) More realistic stimulus presentation methods.

In view of the specific characteristics of consumer food and beverage choice, the needfor “holistic” CA methods, meaning more realistic stimulus presentations, is obvious.To gain a fuller understanding of the consumer choice, market research methods needto encompass quality attributes of pre-purchase phase (brand, quality label, etc.) andpost-purchase phase (taste, convenience, etc.) in one test design (Grunert, 2002).

Using beer as an example we investigate how brand familiarity combined withtasting as additional presentation method influences the outcome of CA.

2. Research objectives and questionsCA for food and beverage products is frequently confronted with the problem how toinclude taste in the experiment, even though taste is an essential intrinsic qualitydimension. There are three possibilities to deal with this problem. First, researchersuse verbal description of taste in terms such as “quite sweet with a strawberry note”,without knowing for example what degree of sweetness the test persons relate to theterm “quite sweet”. Second, researchers apply CA without tasting and try to obtaininformation about taste from qualitative methods such as focus groups. Third, CAwith tasting as additional product presentation method is performed withoutknowing if and how taste influences perception of the other attributes contributing toa change in their utility functions (Vickers, 1993). Until now, little or no research hastaken place to clarify the question of how taste, as one of the most important foodproduct attributes, interacts with strong or weak brands (“weak” in the sense ofbrands that are unfamiliar to the consumer) during a CA experiment. Could it be thatthe familiarity with a brand is so strong that consumers have already establishedpermanent “taste images”, making it unnecessary to include taste in CA test designscontaining “strong” brands?

Consumers’ choice of food and beverage products is typically considered a lowinvolvement choice, which means that they apply heuristic models of choice with lesscognitive efforts and more routine- or emotional-based decisions. For low involvementproducts consumers often use familiar brand names as information cues, standing for a“bundle” of product attributes including taste, simplifying their selection process(Wansink, 2003). It has to be expected that consumers apply similar heuristic duringconjoint task. Therefore it is of crucial importance for product development tounderstand the mutual influence of taste and brand.

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Furthermore consumers’ choice of food and beverage products is mainly influencedby quality expectations, which are derived from extrinsic quality cues (i.e. brand, price,store in which the product is bought, etc.) and intrinsic quality cues (colour of an appleas a quality cue for taste or fat content as a quality cue for tenderness and taste of meat(Grunert, 2002, p. 275)). After purchase, when consumers experience the quality of theproduct, hedonic factors such as smell, appearance and taste strongly influencecustomer satisfaction and re-purchase intentions (Grunert et al., 2000). To this extent,offering test persons the possibility of tasting sample products during conjointmeasurement establishes a more “holistic” test situation that includes attributes fromthe pre-purchase and the consumption situation. Does such a setting lead to highervalidity of the CA outcomes?

Based on this framework we looked for a typical food and beverage product forwhich the consumption situation could be easily included into the CA experiment,meaning that extensive cooking processes should not be required. We selected beer asa test product because it is widely used and beer consumption does not depend on theconsumer’s age, education, income or social status. Standard beer quality, e.g. itssensory characteristics, enables consumers to have stable preference structures, whichhelp them to recognise the product according to taste.

Clearly the selection of beer as a test product limits the degree to which the findingscan be generalised. The taste of different beers is not always as distinct as it is the casewith some other foods and beverages. Using beer reduces generalisability to packed,ready to consume food and beverage products. But in the category “alcoholicbeverages” beer has the highest share of value in sales worldwide (ACNielsen, 2006, p.42). Furthermore it is important to keep in mind that in the beer category manufacturerbrands play a more important role in the consumer choice than private labels. It is theonly food and beverage category worldwide in which manufacturer brands grew fasterthen private labels from 2005 to 2006. The global share of private labels in the beermarket is around 6 per cent, which is quite low compared for example to the dairymarket, which has a 27 per cent global share of private labels (ACNielsen, 2006, p. 42).Insofar the beer market represents a food and beverage sector where manufacturerbrands are still strong and consumer loyalty to these brands plays an important role.

Choosing beer as an example, the objective of this article is to clarify the influence oftasting in CA on consumer preferences in the presence of familiar or unfamiliar brands.In respect to this objective the two main research questions in this study are: “Howdoes tasting as an additional presentation method influence the validity of CA withfood and beverage products?” and “How does tasting as presentation method in CAinfluence the importance of the product attribute ‘brand’?”

3. Theoretical backgroundThe theoretical background to this study focuses on three topics: first, the importanceof taste and its relation to the attribute “brand” in respect to the food and beveragechoice, second the need to present stimuli in CA as realistically as possible, third, anexplanation of the validity measures applied in this study.

3.1 The influence of taste and brand on the food and beverage choiceRoeber et al. (2002) confirm the result of the Food Marketing Institute study (1999) bydetermining that “a majority of consumers consider taste, nutrition, product safety,

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and price as ‘very important’ factors in food selection”. In a US study, Govindasamyet al. (1997) showed that consumers rank freshness, taste/flavour, cleanliness, healthvalue and absence of pesticides among the most important food characteristics.According to Schutz et al. (1986), food sensory characteristics, nutritional information,brand name and price are the most important characteristics in food choice. Roininen(2001) identifies health, energy content, good taste, momentary desire, and price as themost frequently mentioned reasons for choosing either apples or chocolate bars.

Numerous studies have shown that brand name and price are the most importantattributes for rapidly consumed goods (Hensel-Borner and Sattler, 2000a). Thus, it is tobe expected that when choosing beer, brand and price will be more important thanother attributes used in the CA. Furthermore, Daems and Delvaux (1997) mention thatthe sensory characteristics of beer are the most important for consumers. Food andbeverage sensory characteristics i.e. their sensory image, are very often associated witha product name (Barcenas et al., 2001). For that reason, it could be expected thatrespondents in our study would express the importance of beer taste through theimportance of beer brands.

It is important to keep in mind that we use the term “brand” as a multidimensionalconcept that goes far beyond the term “trademark”. A trademark can be a word, name,symbol, colour, scent or sound and represents a legal construct designed to protectproducts or services of entrepreneurs from imitators. In the strictest sense a trademarkfrom the consumer’s point-of-view could be little more than a name without furthermeaning:

If a company treats a brand only as a name, it misses the point of branding. Branding is usedto develop a deep set of meanings for the brand (Kotler and Keller, 2005, p. 443).

This “deep set of meaning” can encompass different levels such as attributes, benefits,values, cultures or personality (Kotler and Keller, 2005, p. 443). In this article the term“unfamiliar brand” stands for brands that in the mind of the consumer representnothing more then a name or symbol without further meaning. The term “familiarbrand” stands for any brand having a “deep set of meaning”, which goes beyond thesimple connotation of a name.

3.2 Influence of different stimuli presentations on CA results“Endeavoring to make stimuli as realistic as possible is traditionally one of the coreelements of conjoint analysis in practice” (Strebinger et al., 2000a), but also the subjectof numerous methodological studies aiming to improve this method. Vriens et al. (1998)compared pictorial and verbal stimulus presentation methods. Sattler (1994) comparedverbal and real presentation. Jaeger et al. (2001) conducted research comparing pictorialand real product presentation, and Ernst and Sattler (2000) and Brusch et al. (2002)studied multimedia stimulus presentation in comparison to verbal presentation. Thesestudies show that presentation form does not influence CA. There are possible effectson internal validity (comparing verbal and real stimulus presentation for the benefit ofverbal presentation) and an influence on the direct or derived results (Brusch et al.,2002).

Presentation forms that are more complex than pictorial or real presentationincrease the understanding of product attributes while verbal stimulus presentationfacilitates stimulus evaluation and reduces research costs.

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Although some studies reveal certain advantages of verbal over pictorial and realstimulus presentation (Ernst and Sattler, 2000), various authors call for the use of realproduct models when possible (Holbrook and Moore, 1981; Green and Srinivasan,1990). Strebinger et al. (2000a, b) argue that pictorial and real stimuli as opposed topurely verbal product descriptions can convey more decision-relevant information andthat this effect differs from product to product. A new technical product concept can berelatively easily described by means of its technical characteristics. However, theproblem emerges with products such as food and beverages, which have intrinsicquality attributes such as taste or sensory attributes. Jaeger et al. (2001) note:

While a verbal representation may be satisfactory for price information, intrinsic productcharacteristics of food products including appearance, taste and texture are probably lessadequately represented.

Holbrook and Moore (1981) state that:

Many products involving aesthetic, sensory, or symbolic benefits must be experienced to bejudged adequately. Music, haute cuisine, or fashion designs must be heard, tasted or seen tobe properly appreciated.

Stimulus presentation as real food or drink products together with the possibility oftasting them has been used only in a very few previous studies. The sensorycharacteristics of the products were simply omitted in CA design and only consumerpreferences towards other product attributes were examined. Exclusion of the intrinsicattributes such as appearance, flavour or texture from CA or ignorance of them couldlead to distortion of results because these attributes cannot be adequately describedverbally ( Jaeger et al., 2001; Brusch et al., 2002). Therefore some researchers call fortasting as a presentation method in CA with food and beverages (Helgesen et al., 1998;Vickers, 1993; Cheng et al., 1990).

3.3 Definition of applied validity criteriaIn this study we used five criteria to measure the validity of CA: face validity,convergent validity, internal validity, predictive validity and subjective evaluations ofthe test persons concerning the conjoint tasks.

Face validity measures whether the results from the CA (partworths) correspondwith the expectations of experts, for example whether the results make sense in view ofthe available theoretical and empirical knowledge about the market place. Numerousstudies have shown that brand name and price are the most important attributes forshort durable consumer goods (Sattler, 1994; Tscheulin, 1991; Hensel-Borner andSattler, 2000a). Food and beverage sensory characteristics, e.g. their sensory image, arevery often associated with a product name (Barcenas et al., 2001). For that reasonrespondents in our study could express the importance of beer taste through theimportance of beer brand.

Convergent validity tests whether the utility weights (i.e. parthworths) obtainedfrom different CA methods are the same. If these weights are equal (statisticallyindifferent), equal convergent validity can be expected because all furthercomputations are based on the estimated partworths. Differences in the preferencestructure can be identified by a comparison of the distributions of parthworths

Internal validity measures the degree of appropriateness of the measurement model.It is measured as a correlation between the input values (preference ranks) and the

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estimated (output) values of the dependent variable. For each card/stimuli thepartworths are summed and according to that sum, the estimated preference ranks arecalculated and compared with the empirical rank value. Further, for each respondent itis possible to calculate the rank correlation coefficient (Kendal’s Tau) betweenempirical and estimated rank values (Sattler, 1994; Backhaus et al., 1996; Ernst andSattler, 2000).

Predictive validity measures the extent to which estimated results overlap with realpurchase intentions. The first-choice-hit rate employed in this research is one of thecriteria very often used to measure predictive validity (Vriens et al., 1998; Brusch et al.,2002; Tscheulin, 1991). The individual partworths for each respondent group are usedto predict choice behaviour in the holdout sample. Holdouts are product stimuli rankedby the test persons without being used for the estimation of the product attributepartworths during CA. The percentage of choices correctly predicted in the holdoutsample based on the first-choice rule indicates the predictive validity of this study.

Hensel-Borner and Sattler (2000a) mention that the complexity of the CA experimentcould negatively influence the validity of the results. Therefore we additionallymeasured the degree of complexity of the different CA experiment settings (with andwithout tasting) by asking respondents for their subjective evaluation (Hensel-Bornerand Sattler, 2000a; Huber et al., 1991; Krapp and Sattler, 2001).

4. Research hypothesesAs several studies have shown, more complex and realistic presentations increase theunderstanding of product evaluation, while verbal stimulus presentation facilitatesstimulus evaluation and reduces research costs. Nevertheless several authors haveconcluded that in the case of food and beverage products it is not sufficient to describethe intrinsic quality attribute “taste” only verbally ( Jaeger et al., 2001; Holbrook andMoore, 1981; Helgesen et al., 1998; Vickers, 1993; Cheng et al., 1990). Because of thedifficulty of describing sensory attributes as flavour or texture verbally, we assumethat if test persons taste food and beverage products during CA, the results should bemore valid. We therefore formulate the hypothesis:

H1. CA with tasting has higher validity than CA with only verbal presentation ofstimuli.

The analysis of literature shows that for food and beverage products and especiallybeer, the most frequent quoted important product attributes are taste (sensorycharacteristics), brand and price. It is interesting to note that food and beveragesensory characteristics are very often associated with product names (Barcenas et al.,2001). We assume that the taste “association” of familiar brands is more stable andstronger anchored in the mind of consumers compared to unfamiliar brands. Thiscould mean that consumers pay more attention to the taste of unfamiliar brands,because there is no a priori knowledge about it. If so, the taste of unfamiliar brandsshould have a bigger influence during CA on consumer preferences compared to thetaste of familiar brands. Based on this assumption we phrase H2:

H2. The influence of tasting is stronger in CA with unfamiliar brands than withfamiliar ones.

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5. Methodology and research process5.1 Test-productOwing to the fact that the experiment took place in Croatian cafe bars a typicalCroatian beer (Ozujsko) and a strong international brand (Stella Artois) were chosen aswell known (familiar) beer brands. Together they represent the market leaders inCroatia among domestic and imported beers respectively (Rajh et al., 2001, 2003;Dujmicic et al., 2003). Additionally Austrian beer brands, only covering a small fractionof market share, were used for the beer samples offered to the test persons asunfamiliar brands.

5.2 Pre-research focus group and surveyIn order to determine the beer attributes and their levels used in CA, a two-steppre-research study was conducted with students from the Faculty of AgricultureUniversity of Zagreb. A focus group of eight students discussed beer attributes thatconsumers usually consider as important for their choice. In a second step, a surveywas carried out with 30 students to detect the importance of selected beer attributes ona five-point Likert scale (Likert, 1932).

Respondents were additionally asked to evaluate coded samples of beers in respectto bitterness (weakly, moderate, highly), CO2 content (low, moderate, high) and fullness(full taste, light taste) on a five-point Likert scale. By applying these verbal attributestest persons evaluated the same beer products differently. Because of thecontradictional nature of these results we decided to use the attribute taste as abetween-subjects factor.

5.3 Research designBased on the results of the preliminary study, four beer attributes were selected for CA:brand, package type, package size and price (see Table I).

In order to control the influence of brand on respondents’ preferences, the CA wasdivided into two experiment groups. Half of the respondents had to evaluate familiar

LevelAttribute Group G1 and G3 Group G2 and G4

Brand Ozujsko beer RStella Artois S

Package type DraughtBottle

Package size0.50 litre

0.33 litrePrice

8 Kunaa (e1.08)

12 Kunaa (e1.62)

16 Kunaa (e2.16)

Note: a Kuna is the Croatian currency

Table I.Beer attributes and levels

used in CA

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beer brands and the other half beer without a familiar brand label. Ozujsko beer andStella Artois were chosen as familiar beer brands. As beers without a familiar brandlabel, two imported Austrian beer brands with limited market access were used andthey were labelled as “R” and “S”. Despite the fact that single letter brands are notcommon on the market, we decided to use them instead of fictitious brand namesbecause for consumers unfamiliar brands are merely replaceable symbols, words,names, colours or even single letters. Each of these two experimental groups wasfurther divided into two sub-groups: one with and one without tasting (Figure 1).

The levels of the three other attributes were chosen according to the prevalent beerchoice in popular Zagreb cafe bars. The two levels of package type were draught andbottled beer. Package size had also two levels: 0.5 and 0.33 litters. Only beer price hadthree levels: 8 Kuna, 12 Kuna, and 16 Kuna (for amount in Euros see Table I).

Hence, the main research comprised a survey with four independent respondentgroups coming from the same population, namely beer consumers in cafe bars inZagreb and surrounding suburbs. For all four groups verbal stimulus presentationmethod was used. The differentiating variables are:

(1) Group G1 – familiar beer brands without tasting.

(2) Group G2 – unfamiliar beer brands without tasting.

(3) Group G3 – familiar beer brands with tasting.

(4) Group G4 – unfamiliar beer brands with tasting.

5.4 Main CA experimentThe main CA experiment was carried out in 2004 with visitors to different cafe bars inZagreb (8) and suburbs (2). The sample consisted of 403 beer consumers divided in fourindependent sub-groups of the same size depending on the stimulus presentationmethod and the beer brands they had to evaluate: group G1 (n ¼ 100), group G2(n ¼ 100), group G3 (n ¼ 100) and group G4 (n ¼ 103). Bar visitors were chosen toparticipate in the survey randomly with an equal number of respondents in each groupsurveyed in each bar. The conditions are certainly not comparable to a laboratoryexperiment, but the intention was to test under real purchasing and consumptionsituations.

In addition to the CA experiment, a structured questionnaire was used consisting ofa few questions regarding respondents’ socio-economic characteristics, beer purchase

Figure 1.Research design

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and beer consumption behaviour, importance of a number beer attributes andpreferences for these attributes.

Different respondent samples have also been used in comparable studies aiming totest the validity of various CA methods (Ernst and Sattler, 2000; Brusch et al., 2002;Pullman et al., 1999). The chi-square test showed that there were no differencesbetween groups in respect to respondents’ demographic and socio-economiccharacteristics ( p . 0.05). Therefore it can be concluded that the four groups werecomparable and differences in results would not be influenced by systematic deviationin the groups (Hensel-Borner and Sattler, 2000b).

Conjoint data were collected by means of the full profile method (the most commonmethod of data collection in conjoint research (Gil and Sanchez, 1997)). A fractionalfactorial design was chosen and ten stimuli were derived by applying the Orthoplanprocedure of SPSS (see SPSS Inc., 1997). Otherwise a complete factorial design of2 £ 2 £ 2 £ 3 would encompass 24 stimuli: a number, which would make theexperiment for the test persons far too complicated. The statistical software SPSSConjoint uses fractional factorial designs, which present an appropriate fraction of thepossible alternatives. Fractional factorial designs are experimental designs consistingof a carefully chosen subset (fraction) of the experimental runs of a full factorial design.The subset or fraction is chosen so as to exploit the sparsity-of-effects principle toaccess information about the most important features of the problem studied, whileusing considerably fewer resources than a full factorial design (SPSS Inc., 1997).

An additive partworth approach was utilised to estimate consumer preferences:

The respondent’s task is to rank or score each profile from most to least preferred, most toleast likely to purchase, or some other preference scale. From these rankings or scores,conjoint analysis derives utility scores for each factor level. These utility scores, analogous toregression coefficients, are called part-worths and can be used to find the relative importanceof each factor (SPSS Inc., 1997).

Within the conjoint task, respondents had to rank a set of ten stimuli according to theirpreferences. We decided to use ranking because it provides similar results compared toratings. Carmone et al. (1978) compared the over-all conjoint model goodness of fitunder several forms of input data (raw data, rankings, and six-point rating scales), andfound conjoint analysis to provide robust results regardless of the type of input datascales, with superior recoveries for rankings in some cases.

Descriptions of beer concepts (stimuli) were printed on separate, coloured cards. Thecard order given to the respondents was randomised. Those respondents whoevaluated CA with tasting had to taste two beers before ranking. The respondents hadthe possibility of tasting beers as many times as they wanted during the conjoint task.The beer was served cold in transparent glasses. To prevent the test persons frommixing up beers, the brand name (familiar or unfamiliar) was written on additionalcards under each glass. Each conjoint task contained five additional, holdout stimuli.The holdouts represented beers already existing on the market or possible realisticconstructs of beers. These stimuli had to be ranked according to purchase intention butwere not be used for partworth calculation in CA. To facilitate the respondents’ tasks,holdout and main cards were differently coloured, as were cards representing familiarand unfamiliar beers (four colours altogether) (Figure 2). Holdouts served to assess thepredictive validity and were the basis for our hypothesis tests.

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5.5 Data analysisCA validity was measured with five criteria: face validity, convergent validity, internalvalidity, predictive validity and subjective evaluation of conjoint task.

For face validity we used Mann-Whitney and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to verifystatistical differences between the importances of single attributes. Convergentvalidity was verified by applying ANOVA and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (H1 and H2).ANOVA was applied to scrutinise differences between distributions of utilities amongrespondents in different groups (H1) (Hensel-Borner and Sattler, 2000b).

To test for convergent validity, partworths were calculated for each respondentfollowed by a comparison of distribution of these partworths between tasting andnon-tasting respondents by applying a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.

To verify differences in internal validity between groups we compared individualKendal’s Tau coefficients among groups by means of non-parameter Mann-Whitneyand Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests (similar comparison made Ernst and Sattler, 2000).

Predictive validity was evaluated by measuring the first-hit choice rate. Byapplying chi-square test to the first-hit choice rates between respondents groups weverified differences in respect to predictive validity.

To measure respondents’ experience with the different CA experiment settings(with and without tasting) we collected their subjective evaluations concerningcomplexity and interest of the conjoint task. Using the five-point Likert scalerespondents in this study were asked how difficult (complexity) and how interestingthe conjoint task was to evaluate. Non-parameter Mann-Whitney andKolmogorov-Smirnov tests were applied to test for significant differences concerningthe subjective evaluations of CA tasks among different respondents groups.

6. Results6.1 Sample characteristicsAltogether 403 respondents took part in this study of whom 266 were male (66 per cent)and 137 female (34 per cent). The number of male respondents is significantly higherbut this is in accordance with the sex structure of beer consumers in general (Pettigrew,2002). Respondents were aged between 17 and 72, with an average of 28.97 (^10.078)

Figure 2.An example of CA cards

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years. The majority of respondents were in the age group between 21 and 35 years,which reflects the age of most visitors to cafe bars. The majority of respondents hadfinished secondary school (72 per cent), a further 25 per cent had higher education and3 per cent of respondents had only completed primary school.

6.2 Influence of tasting on validity of CA resultsPrevious research has shown that brand name plays an important role in the formationof beer preferences (Allison and Uhl, 1964; Guinard et al., 2001) and that beer quality isoften associated with its brand name. Hence, in this study we investigated whethertasting as a presentation method has an influence on the validity of CA with familiarand unfamiliar brands. Table II gives an overview concerning the outcomes of thedifferent validity tests. The results are explained in order of the several validitymeasures; each first in respect to differences between CA with tasting compared to CAwithout tasting and secondly in respect to differences between the groups G1 to G4.

Concerning face validity Mann-Whitney and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests confirmedthat there were significant differences between the importance of price and other beerattributes by all consumers ( p , 0.01). Nevertheless, the difference between brandimportance and the importance of package size and package type was notable onlyamong respondents who tasted beer ( p , 0.01). The respondents who evaluated beerconcepts only according to their verbal description did not significantly distinguish

Validity measureCA with tasting versus CA withouttasting G1-G4

Face validity Higher face-validity for CA withtasting

Smaller face validity in G2compared to other groups

Convergent validity Almost no convergent validity, e.g.the methods result in differentpreference structures

No differences in importancestructure among groups G1, G3 andG4Respondents from G2 havesignificantly different preferencestructure

Internal validity No statistically significantdifferences

Kendal’s tau for G1 and G3 (knownbrands) rather similarDifference between Kendal’s tau ofG2 and G4 (unknown brands) muchhigher

Predictive validity (First-choice-hit-rate)

No statistically significantdifferences

No significant differences betweenG1 and G3Significant difference between G2and G4

Subjective evaluation ofCA task

No statistically significantdifferences in CA task complexityCA with tasting more interestingcompared to verbal CA

No statistical differences betweenG1-G4 regarding difficulty ofconjoint taskNo statistical differences regardinginterestingness of conjoint taskbetween G2 and G4G1 consider CA task moreinteresting than G3

Table II.Summary table of

validity tests

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between these attributes. These results suggest that stimulus presentation with tastinghas higher face validity (H1).

As expected, the most important beer attributes for three respondents groups (G1,G3 and G4) were brand name and price. However, the respondents who evaluatedunfamiliar beer brands without tasting (G2) considered brand name to be lessimportant than other beer attributes (Figure 3). This indicates the smaller face validityin G2 group of respondents.

In respect to convergent validity the results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test forpartworths between tasting and non-tasting respondents (Table III) revealed astatistical difference between groups for all attributes (brand, p , 0.01; price, packagetype and package size, p , 0.05).

Since the importance weights do not have the same structure in these groups, it maybe concluded that there is almost no convergent validity, e.g. the methods result indifferent preference structures.

Statistical tests (ANOVA) used to examine the difference between the partworths ofthe four groups showed no differences in importance structures between groups G1, G3and G4, while respondents from G2 had significantly different preference structures( p , 0.05). This is a clear confirmation ofH2 “the influence of tasting is stronger in CAwith unfamiliar brands than with familiar ones”, because G2 is the group withunfamiliar brands without tasting.

Internal validity measured as the Kendall tau coefficient produced high values inboth respondents’ samples; a slightly higher value was found for respondents who didnot taste beers (0.929) compared with other respondents (0.857). However, the Kendalltau differences were not statistically significant.

Kendal tau coefficients for respondents from G1 and G3 (familiar brands) were quitesimilar (0.93 and 1.0 respectively). Nonetheless, the difference between Kendal taucoefficients for G2 and G4 (unfamiliar brands) was much higher; its value was 0.79 forG2 and 0.93 for G4. This indicator of internal validity confirms the hypothesis thattasting has a stronger influence on the validity of CA with unfamiliar brands than withfamiliar brands.

For predictive validity the first-choice hit rate was applied. The hit rate of therespondents who evaluated beers according to pure verbal presentation method was 54per cent compared with 59 per cent for respondents who tasted beer. Although astatistical difference between these two rates was not confirmed, the results indicatethe tendency towards higher predictive validity for CA with tasting.

The chi-square test showed that there was no significant difference in thefirst-choice hit rate between respondents in groups G1 and G3. Conversely, asignificant difference was found between the hit rate of G2 and G4 respondents(x 2 ¼ 2:837, df ¼ 1, p ¼ 0:061). The first-choice hit rates were 46 per cent for G2 and58 per cent for G4 (Table IV).

The test of proportions indicated that there were differences between first-choice hitrate and share of correctly estimated stimuli in a random model in all respondentsgroups (G1-G4) ( p , 0.01). The minor improvement compared with the random modelappeared in CA without tasting with unfamiliar brands (32.5 per cent), while theimprovement in all other groups was similar and ranged from 47.3 to 52.5 per cent.This would indicate that CA without familiar brands delivers higher predictivevalidity when the test persons can taste the products.

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Figure 3.The importance of beerattributes in different

respondent groups

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Both respondent groups evaluated the conjoint task as similarly complex (averageevaluation of conjoint task difficulty on the five-point Likert scale was 3.4 and 3.3,respectively; 1 ¼ not complex, 5 ¼ highly complex). On the other hand, a significantdifference was apparent between respondents’ evaluation of conjoint taskattractiveness. The respondents with pure verbal presentation evaluated the taskwith an average grade of 2.8 while the respondents who tasted beers considered theconjoint task to be more interesting (average grade 3.1; 1 ¼ not interesting, 5 ¼ veryinteresting, p , 0.05).

There were no statistical differences between respondent groups G1-G4 regardingdifficulty of conjoint task (3.3 for G1, G2, G4 and 3.5 for G3). By contrast, the respondentswho evaluated familiar brands without tasting considered the conjoint task as the leastinteresting (average grade 2.6) while all other respondents considered it as moreinteresting (G2 3.1; G3 3.0; G4 3.2). The difference between respondents of G1 and G3concerning interestingness was statistically significant (p ¼ 0:01). Although therespondents who evaluated unfamiliar beers with tasting gave a slightly higher score forthe conjoint task, there were no statistical differences between groups G2 and G4.

7. DiscussionIn this study, the hypothesis was confirmed that tasting has a greater influence on thevalidity of CA with unfamiliar product brands. Tasting had no influence on the validityof CA with familiar beer brands i.e. the results of verbal CA and CA with tastingperformed with familiar brands were similar (equal). One could argue that consumershad already formed a stable judgment of beers with familiar brands and that tastingdid not influence this perception. These findings are similar to those of Barcenas et al.(2001) that consumer expectations, derived from previous experience about a particularproduct, influence their preferences and product acceptance. Therefore, it may be

CAKolmogorov-Smirnov

testImportance (%) Verbal With tasting Z p

Brand 25.7 38.5 2.865 0.000Package size 20.0 16.6 1.509 0.021Package type 23.1 16.8 1.442 0.031Price 31.2 28.1 1.495 0.023

Table III.The importance of singlebeer characteristics inverbal CA and CA withtasting

Without tasting With tastingG1 knownbrands

G2 unknownbrands

G3 knownbrands

G4 unknownbrands

Number of respondents 100 100 100 103First-choice-hit-rate (%) 62.0 46.0 59.6 57.8Percent of improvement compared torandom modela 52.5 32.5 49.5 47.3

Notes: a ¼ 100 £ (% correctly estimated 2 % correctly estimated in random model)/(100 2 %correctly estimated in random model)

Table IV.First-choice-hit-rate indifferent groups

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concluded that previous experience with familiar beer brands is sufficient to expresspreferences in a stable way. It is interesting that some respondents asked to tastefamiliar beer brands Ozujsko beer and Stella Artois refused to taste the beers, replyingthat they were familiar with their taste.

This observation could also be a confirmation of the “quality cues”-theory.Obviously our respondents have subsumed the quality cue “taste” under the“umbrella” of the quality cue “brand”. This is in accordance with Verbeke and Ward(2006), who state that uncertainty or perceived difficulty to evaluate quality increasesconsumers’ usage of extrinsic quality cues. From that point-of-view the presence offamiliar brand names seems to have weakened or overridden the “taste information”.

There were no differences in validity measures for the two groups with familiarbrands. It can therefore be concluded that when performing CA with familiar brandswith a well defined image, it is not necessary to use CA with tasting since tastingincreases research complexity and costs and does not achieve better results.

By contrast, respondents were unable to consistently evaluate their preferencestowards unfamiliar beers only according to their external attributes. After tasting theseproducts, respondents’ answers were much more consistent. Therefore, it may beconcluded that the structure of attribute importance and preferences in CA variessignificantly when respondents also taste products unfamiliar with, besides receivingverbal descriptions. The research results showed that after tasting the expectedstructure of attribute importance was obtained, i.e. the same structure as obtained inCA with familiar brands. On the other hand, respondents who evaluated a purelyverbal description of unfamiliar beers considered brand name less important thanexpected. These results are consistent with the results of the study by Arvola et al.(1999), which revealed that purchase intention could only be well predicted afterrespondents had tasted unknown cheeses.

Apart from face validity, predictive validity was higher when respondents tastedunfamiliar beers before evaluating conjoint stimuli. It may therefore be concluded thatstimulus presentation method tasting gives better results than pure verbal CA in thecase of unfamiliar brands.

Although we expected that the complexity of the conjoint task without tastingwould be more difficult for respondents, the study did not confirm this assumption.One possible explanation is that because of lack of interest, respondents made littlecognitive effort to solve the conjoint task. CA with tasting of unfamiliar beer brandswas evaluated as most interesting, but the differences between presentation methodswere not statistically validated.

8. Recommendations for future research and CA stimuli presentationBeer consumers have relatively well defined preferences for brands and very oftenassociate beer taste with its brand and image. In this study, domestic and marketleaders as familiar brands were investigated. It would be interesting to repeat thisstudy with beer brands familiar to consumers but consumed less often. Since the studyshowed that tasting does not have an influence on the CA validity of familiar productbrands, similar research could be carried out with product without well familiar brandsor products in which brand preferences are not well expressed. It is possible that CAwith products of higher heterogeneity, especially regarding their sensorycharacteristics (e.g. fruit yoghurt), could produce different results.

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The results of this study indicate that tasting should be used as a stimuluspresentation method for CA with food and beverage products/brands, which areunfamiliar to the consumers. When testing familiar brands and brands withestablished perceptions, simpler and less expensive verbal stimulus presentation canbe used. The decision regarding the stimulus presentation method in CA designed totest the acceptance of a new product should be based on the product developmentstage. Sattler (1994) states that in the idea screening and concept testing stage, methodsthat do not necessarily have very high result validity are acceptable. At that stage, theuse of a verbal presentation form is recommended. At the stage of determining intrinsicproduct characteristics (including sensory attributes) it is appropriate to use CA withtasting. When assessing extrinsic product attributes (e.g. package, appearance, priceetc.) it is not necessary to use CA with tasting.

CA used to explore the market situation (e.g. market share) should be carried outwith the tasting presentation method. This is especially the case when studyingproducts less known to consumers.

Motivated respondents will produce better research results (Strebinger et al., 2000b).This study showed that tasting increases the attractiveness of the conjoint task as aninteresting exercise, i.e. motivating respondents to evaluate conjoint stimuli. Thereforeit is recommended to include tasting, as CA can become tedious for the respondentsbecause of the high number of product cards.

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Corresponding authorMarija Cerjak can be contacted at: mcerjak@agr.hr

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