An investigation into the association pattern technique as a quantitative approach to measuring means-end chains

Abstract

Means-end chain theory links products to consumers by postulating hierarchical relations between attributes of the product, consequences of product use and values of consumers. It has served as an important conceptual framework for studies in marketing. The authors investigate the association pattern technique (APT) as a supplement to laddering, the most popular, qualitative measurement methodology in means-end chains research. APT is a structured method for measuring means-end chains, suitable for large-scale surveys. It can be used in personal as well as quantitative mail interviews. APT separately measures the attribute-consequence, and the consequence-value links. The independence of attribute-consequence, and consequence-value links is crucial to the validity of APT. Using loglinear models, we investigate this assumption for empirical data on four different products. Consistent support for independence is found. In addition, we use loglinear models to test the convergent validity of APT and laddering with respect to the content and structure of the means-end chains network that they reveal. The results show that the content of the APT and laddering networks differs. This result is explained from the different task formats. Most importantly, the hypothesis that the structure of APT and laddering networks is the same could not be rejected.