Using Attribute Ratings for Product Positioning: Some Distinctions among Compositional Approaches

Compositional methods for generating product spaces from attribute data differ in their capacity to recover objective dimensions that discriminate between brands. These differences, which have important implications for the usefulness of various scaling techniques to managers, are illustrated by an example from consumer esthetics involving the evaluation of recordings by jazz saxophonists. The emphasis is on contrasts among the compositional approaches that result in different kinds of dimensions being prominent in reduced space solutions.