Abstract
During the past several years, one of the more intensively studied areas in marketing and consumer research has been multi-attribute models of attitude [36]. The basic proposition of these models is that consumers form attitudes toward products on the basis of product attributes, a formulation which has considerable implications for marketing strategies. While a variety of alternative specifications of the multi-attribute model have been employed, the most prominent have been the so-called "adequacy-importance" model [ 10, 11, 14, 17, 31 ] and the approach advocated by Fishbein [15, 18, 22, 35]. Empirical research directed at validating these various forms of the multi-attribute model has commonly been based on cross-sectional correlation designs, although more recently individual level analysis has been strongly advocated [11, 12]. This article presents an alternative approach for investigating the adequacy-importance and Fishbein models at the individual level.