Facilitating Consumer Choice Decisions: The Importance of Branding Cues

Abstract

Consumers undertake little external search when buying packaged groceries, with considerable reliance being placed on memory. To undertake grocery shopping efficiently, without suffering from information overload, consumers seek a few “chunks” of information which they regard as having a high informational value. They interpret products as arrays of cues and they seek only those few cues with which they are confident in predicting a product′s performance. Brand name cues appear to be important information chunks. To understand better the attributes which consumers use when choosing a particular brand, a consumer research study was undertaken across six packaged grocery product fields. Confirming the earlier literature, between eight and ten attributes were used by consumers to make a brand choice and brand name information was frequently sought. Implications for marketing management are discussed.