The quality of ladders generated by abbreviated hard laddering

Abstract

Laddering is a qualitative measurement technique embedded in means-end chain theory. The fundamental premise of this approach is that consumers learn to associate attributes (A) of products with particular consequences (C), and that these consequences are important because they relate to personal values (V) held by the individual. The A-C-V associations are, therefore, often seen as a representation of the basic drives that motivate consumer behaviour. Laddering is used to elicit these associations from the respondent's cognitive structure, in the form of A-C-V ladders. There are two methods of generating these ladders: Soft laddering (conventional, semi-structured interviews, where the natural flow of speech of the respondent is restricted as little as possible), and Hard laddering, which forces the respondent to produce ladders in a pre-determined sequence. Unfortunately, either procedure is time consuming and requires a considerable physical and mental effort from the respondent. Recently, a method of shortening a laddering survey while controlling the amount of information lost has been proposed in the literature. This article defines and examines the quality of ladders obtained with the abbreviated procedure. It shows that the abbreviated laddering method is likely to lose only a handful of high-quality ladders that might have otherwise been produced by the respondents with the full set of questions.