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Introduces a new approach to the investigation of consumers' reasons for purchasing (or not purchasing) products. The Means‐End Chains model, by shifting attention from product attributes to consumers' personal values, is particularly applicable to segmentation and positioning strategies for high involvement products like sparkling wines. Reports structured depth interviews with 27 consumers uncovering their means‐end chains in relation to sparkling wines. Responses differ noticeably by usage: heavier users prefer dry products as more sophisticated are willing to pay a premium price, and have more complex psychological needs to be fulfilled with the product including more socially oriented reasons for usage. Suggests insights from the means‐end approach may allow producers of premium sparkling wines to maintain a healthy position even in a decreasing market.

This study aims to examine the effects of enhanced visualization of intangible service value through integration of means-end perspectives on advertising effectiveness.

Banking advertisements, incorporating message stimuli derived from salient values desired by the financial consumers and designed to assist message elaboration and stimulate personal relevance, were developed to examine the influence of cognitive connectivity on vividness of intangible service benefits and service advertising effectiveness.

The findings demonstrate that greater cognitive connectivity positively affects perceived tangibility, attitude toward the advertisement and attitude toward the brand. Additionally, the results indicated that perceived personal relevance has higher influence on envisioning service components, compared to one’s ability to connect visual cues to perceived benefits and to immediate end-goals.

This study incorporated visual stimuli limited only to financial security and social recognition. Future research should aim to examine the effects of different types of values on consumers’ elaboration process and their ability to visualize financial services.

This study extends knowledge of the means-end chain by proposing a means-end cognitive connectivity construct which influences the degree that consumers are able to mentally picture intangible service attributes. This study also provides insight that different values have different degree of influence on one’s ability to visualize service.

This paper aims to test whether the effects of wine consumption on the emotions vary with the age of the consumer, the objective being to use the results to orient further product differentiation in a highly saturated and competitive market.

The decision structures of various age groups of wine consumers were explored by means of laddering interviews, a technique drawn from means‐end chain theory, to reveal consumers' attribute‐consequence‐value chains.

The results reveal that wine consumers perceive an emotional benefit from drinking wine and that this varies with the age of the consumer. The degree of abstraction in the cognitive process involved in the perception of this benefit increases inversely with the age of the consumer. Older people report less complex decision‐making processes. In general terms, consumers drink wine for the sensory pleasure it gives, but younger drinkers are also motivated to drink it for reasons relating to cultural identity and social status, while older generations focus primarily on the potential of wine as a social catalyst.

This study offers the wine industry new alternatives to enhance information, communication and product differentiation campaigns.

This study seeks to focus on the following: discovering consumer preferences regarding package tours to China; revealing differences among consumers' cognition related to these package tours, travel advertisements on web sites and search engine results; identifying the similarities among travel agency web sites; and establishing a consumer cognitive structure to assist marketers in designing written content for display in search engine results.

The study adopted means‐end chain theory as a theoretical basis and used the written content of tourism web sites displayed in search engine results as an empirical object. By comparing the contents of tourism web sites and the search engine results, the researchers could analyse and compare similarities and differences among web site content, search results and consumer cognition.

Using the utility score of each attribute level to calculate the total utility can uncover the customers' preferred attribute level portfolio. The calculation results identified the most preferred tour package. The study found that the greater the variety of package tours to China provided by the web sites of a particular travel agent, the higher the possibility of that agent providing discount incentives. Furthermore, the text content of each web site provides more attribute information regarding package tours and less information about the consequences of travelling and value satisfaction.

This is one of the first studies to provide a methodology integrating conjoint analysis and the means‐end chain approach. Understanding the written content of web sites preferred by Chinese people can help marketers and web site designers design web sites attractive to this market.

This paper aims to investigate an integrated, holistic assessment of the characteristics by which consumers judge non-sponsored product review video (PRV) source, message and medium components as credible, and how these are linked to personal values for a deeper understanding of multidimensional credibility assessments of PRVs.

Employing a means-end approach, the authors draw on credibility theory and the persuasion knowledge model to analyse data from 21 in-depth semi-structured laddering interviews.

First, the authors demonstrate distinctive contributions of the video modality towards PRV credibility assessments and the interplay between specific PRV characteristics, cognitive and socio-emotional consequences, and personal values in an ongoing process of credibility assessment. Second, high persuasion knowledge creates awareness of the potential phoniness of the market, revealing a dark side to PRV use even in non-sponsored PRV seemingly created and shared as an act of benevolent concern between consumers.

This paper focused on the credibility of non-sponsored PRVs, future studies might investigate motivations and attributes by which users judge sponsored reviews. Also, the roles of specific product categories and existing brand trust on PRVs credibility provide avenues for further research.

This research offers practical implications for reviewers and brand managers to leverage the unique informational values of video by focusing on the interplay between credibility attributes and customer values.

This work advances credibility theory in the PRV context by examining how non-sponsored PRVs are evaluated as credible, by highlighting consumer persuasion knowledge and scepticism and including the holistic effects of the interplay between source, message and video format characteristics and by linking these to consumers’ goals and values.

This paper aims to inform the promotion of sustainable modes of transport. For this purpose, it deploys a means-ends framework as a type of second-order cybernetics and uses it to explore cognitive transport mode choice structures.

The empirical study relies on a purposive sample and a qualitative research methodology known as laddering. It is aimed at the identification and comparative analysis of the cognitive means-ends structures of transport users.

The results reveal more positive and complex associations for the car than for public transport. Two main positive means-ends structures are identified for public transport, one related with the relaxation and the other with doing useful things while travelling. Dominant positive structures for the car are related with self-confidence, satisfaction and personal freedom. Negative means-ends structures in addition reveal important justifications and rationalizations for car use.

Based on the identified distinct means-ends elements and structures, this study holds important implications for developing a communications strategy and policy interventions seeking to promote public transport.

Means-ends theory is proposed as an integrative cybernetic framework for the study of stakeholders’ (customers’) mental models. The empirical study is the first to concurrently and comparatively examine positive and negative means-ends chains for the car and for the public transport modes.

This paper compares consumer motivation for buying “Integrated production” certified and labelled apples through either farm shops or supermarkets. The research methodology builds on means‐end‐chain (MEC) theory, with data collected through personal laddering interviews in Belgium. Hierarchical value maps, which visualise motivational structures of supermarket and farm shop purchase of quality labelled apples, are presented. Apple buyers at both outlet types pursue similar values, with health being paramount, but realise those values through largely different MECs. The findings reveal interactions between market channel characteristics and product attributes. Also, the study shows how outlet choice influences the perception and the motivation structure of the respondents for fresh apples. From the findings, implications pertaining to advertising are set forth through the application of the “Means‐end conceptualisation of the components of advertising strategy” or MECCAS model.

With advances in information technology, multi‐channel shopping (MCS) has become a prevailing purchasing pattern today. Although MCS provides more benefits than single‐channel shopping, there is a need to investigate consumer values in the MCS context. This study aims to develop a consumer value hierarchy that represents how consumers think and pursue when performing MCS.

The research framework was developed from a perspective of means‐end theory. Two studies were designed to elicit and evaluate a consumer value hierarchy of MCS. First, a qualitative study was conducted to explore means‐end elements of MCS. Then, a hierarchical value map of MCS was constructed with 314 usable responses from an empirical survey in Taiwan. The impacts of past shopping experience on consumers' value perceptions were also examined.

In the hierarchical value map (HVM) of MCS, the results indicate 18 means‐end chains from ten MCS attributes resulting in nine consequences derived from those attributes, and then to four MCS values. The results also show that both expert and novice shoppers emphasize the utilitarian value of MCS; however, shopping novices pay more attention to the hedonic value of MCS than experts do.

This paper provides several managerial implications for multi‐channel retailers. Multi‐channel retailers need to know more about the attributes and functions of each channel that they offer in order to create a superior shopping experience for their customers. Also, retailers need to understand different MCS patterns for successful multi‐channel customer relationship management. Finally, the consumer value hierarchy of MCS is a useful tool for retailers to develop effective promotion strategies to increase customers' engagement in MCS.

This paper is the first to apply means‐end theory to investigate consumer value in the MCS context. It advances the consumer value literature in explaining a novel type of consumer channel‐mixing behavior. The paper concludes with implications for multi‐channel retailers, and future directions for MCS research are also discussed.

Although the basic idea of benefit segmentation lies in using causal, as opposed to descriptive, factors as segmentation criteria, most of the empirical studies do not differentiate between product attributes and the benefit sought by consumers. The objectives of this article are to clarify the distinction between attributes and benefits sought, and to apply a modified laddering technique, based on means‐end theory to use the elicited benefits to form benefit segments. A comparison with attribute‐based segments demonstrates that means‐end chains provide a powerful tool for “true” benefit segmentation.