Report Examines How Consumers View Products With Unlikely Attribute Combinations

A car can claim to be 'stylish and safe' or 'powerful and fuel efficient,' but there are limits to what consumers will believe; blue cola, healthy candy don’t work. Will an upscale Wal-Mart?

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (November 15, 2006) – When a new hybrid car is marketed as being fuel efficient and powerful, how does the consumer interpret these two attributes that seemingly contradict each other?

A new report from Penn State's Smeal College of Business examines how consumers reconcile paradoxical product attributes and how far marketers can go in assigning unlikely attribute combinations and still have their products remain credible in consumers' eyes.

Smeal professors Ujwal Kayande, Gary Lilien, and Duncan Fong, teamed up with John H. Roberts of London Business School and the Australian Graduate School of Management, to examine "brand incoherence," a phenomenon that occurs when two attributes that appear to be mutually exclusive are used to describe a product.

For instance, two desirable features in an automobile are horsepower and fuel efficiency. However, a car that is marketed as having high levels of both features may create incoherence in the minds of consumers because high levels of the two features, although desirable, are thought to be unlikely to coexist in the same product.

Incoherence may also explain the difficulty that Wal-Mart has had with its recent strategy of selling upscale merchandise. Wal-Mart is recognized by consumers for its low prices and shoppers may have difficulty turning to the discount retailer for high-priced, upscale goods.

"If powerful cars are thought to be fuel guzzlers, safe cars are believed to be boring, and cola sodas are known to be brown, then to what extent will the market accept a 'powerful and fuel efficient car' (2005 Honda Accord Hybrid), a 'safe and stylish' car (Volvo V70),  or a 'blue-colored cola' (Pepsi Blue)?" the authors ask.

They develop a model to see how far marketers can go before incoherence harms how consumers view their product. The authors find that combining positively valued attributes may increase expected preference for a product even if those attributes occur in unexpected combinations; but marketers can go too far. If the two attributes cause too much incoherence, the product will suffer because consumers will become increasingly uncertain about the product.

This new model of the effect of incoherence on preference should be a boon to marketers for new product launches, brand extensions, and product repositioning.

The model also measures the effect of each attribute to help marketers determine if they lower one attribute, how it will affect another. As an example, the authors offer the case of Eveready flashlights, which were made ugly on purpose because of a perception that ugly flashlights are more durable.

"In contrast, Body Smarts, a healthy candy line launched by Pfizer with much fanfare, died a quick death perhaps because no attempt was made to deal with the effects of the incoherence of 'healthy and candy,'" they write. Another product that probably died of incoherence: Pepsi Blue. Consumers associate cola drinks with the color brown.

"Mapping the Bounds of Incoherence: How Far Can You Go and How Does It Affect Your Brand?" will be published in a forthcoming issue of Marketing Science.

Kayande is assistant professor of marketing, Lilien is distinguished research professor of management science, and Fong is professor of marketing and statistics at Smeal.