A comparison of five elicitation techniques for elicitation of attributes of low involvement products

The critical first step for most instruments used in analysing consumer choice and motivation is the identification of product attributes which are important to the consumer and for which there are differences among the available product alternatives. A number of techniques, ranging from the complex elicitation of idiosyncratic attributes or simpler picking procedures, have been developed to elicitate such attributes. The purpose of the study presented here is to compare attributes of a low involvement product, viz, vegetable oil, elicited by five different techniques on a number of dimensions directed from theories of consumer buying behaviour. Although a number of differences between the techniques are identified in the study, the main findings are that the robustness of the different techniques for attribute elicitation is considerable. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PsycINFO classification: 2260; 3920 JEL classification: C80; M30.