The Hidden Value Drivers: Explicit and Implicit Antecedents of Customer Perceived Value

摘要

Why people prefer specific brands over others is directly connected to the perceived values of the considered goods. Although a lot of research has been done to uncover the hidden processes in the human brain, most research does not to explore the dynamics of consumers' value perceptions in its full complexity. Still, most studies rely on traditional self-assessment scales that are based on explicit measures of consumer's product and brand related behaviors, although this practice is susceptible to two kinds of bias ever since: First, participants are not always aware of all reasons that drive their perception and behavior and second, participants regularly do not express their true attitudes and beliefs by giving wrong answers out of concerns regarding social desirability. In contrast to sole explicit measures that are based on the ability and willingness of consumers to answer correctly, implicit measures focus on consumers' unconscious and mostly automatic reactions toward different marketing stimuli. In this regard, our study introduces an integrated approach analyzing the impact of consumers' brand related motivation (implicitly and explicitly measured) on customer perceived value. By analyzing motivational set-points in relation to customer perceived value, marketing managers can specifically discover and eliminate gaps in brand perception in order to identify e.g. switching tendencies towards other brands with more ideal motivational brand-customer-value fits.