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Unit 9: Attitude Measurement and Scaling Techniques




                 4.   Courteous nature of employees                —————                          Notes
                 5.   Loan facilities                              —————
                                                                   —————
                                                                      100
            Banking features as given above are allocated 100 points. Allocation depends on the importance
            of features as judged by the respondent. Respondent may allocate interest rate 30 points, location
            10 points, etc. Here respondent need to divide 100 points among various features given above.
            By using his scale, bank will come to know the attributes that are more important to the customer
            which in turn influence the customer to choose a particular bank. The only precaution to be
            taken while administering this scale is that, if there are too many attributes, the respondent will
            find it difficult, since lot of mental energy is required to answer the scale. This scale can not be
            used effectively in case the respondent is illiterate.

            Multi-dimensional Scaling
            This is used to study consumer attitudes, particularly with respect to perceptions and preferences.
            These techniques help identify the product attributes that are important to the customers and to
            measure their relative importance. Multi-Dimensional Scaling is useful in studying the following:
            1.   (a) What are the major attributes considered while choosing a product (soft drinks, modes
                 of transportation)? (b) Which attributes do customers compare to evaluate different brands
                 of the product? Is it price, quality, availability, etc.?
            2.   Which is the ideal combination of attributes according to the customer? (i.e., which two or
                 more attributes consumer will consider before deciding to buy).
            3.   Which advertising messages is compatible with the consumer’s brand perceptions?
            This scaling is used to describe similarity and preference of brands. The respondents were asked
            to indicate their perception, or the similarity between various objects (products, brands, etc.)
            and preference among objects. This scaling is also known as perceptual mapping.
            There are two ways of collecting the input data to plot perceptual mapping:
            1.   Non-attribute method.
            2.   Attribute method.
            1.   Non-attribute method: Here, the researcher asks the respondent to make a judgment
                 about the objects directly. In this method, the criteria for comparing the objects is decided
                 by the respondent himself.
            2.   Attribute method: In this method, instead of respondents selecting the criteria, they were
                 asked to compare the objects based on the criteria specified by the researcher.
            For example, to determine the perception of a consumer: Assume there are five insurance
            companies to be evaluated on two attributes namely (1) convenient locality (2) courteous personal
            service. Customers’ perception regarding the five insurance companies are as follows:



















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