From Importance of Features in Purchasing to Consumers’ Personal Values: Overview of Laddering Technique and How It Works in Marketing Research

The purpose of the present study is to introduce the laddering technique as an appropriate tool in marketing and consumer behavior research and how it is implemented in practice. In this study, laddering technique is introduced as an important tool for understanding consumer values and formulating strategies of brand and advertising message. Although the laddering technique is a powerful and useful tool for marketers and researchers to understand consumer behavior, however, due to the low familiarity and difficulty in implementing this technique, it is slightly used in consumer behavior studies. In this study, in addition to describing how this technique is implemented and how to extract a hierarchical value map, the challenges and problems faced by the researchers in applying this technique and their solution are mentioned. This study provides appropriate insight for marketers and researchers that interested in recognizing consumer values and how they relate the characteristics of a particular product or brand to individual consumers.