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Journal of Marketing, July 1975 72 significant number of consumers want, and will use, the information disclosed. Marketing research appears to have two roles in this program. The first is to identify what information is material, in the sense that I have just described it. If consumers don't care what mileage their cars are getting, that is something that goes to the legal roots of the program and that can be determined with the aid of marketing research. There is another, more constructive, role for marketing research in these proceedings: to determine the most effective way of communicating material information. Several surveys, for example, have established that a significant number of consumers want, and will use, information about the nutritional value of the foods they are buying, that such information can influence buying habits. Experience has shown that it is extremely difficult to develop an effective way of conveying that message. But it is by no means impossible. With the help of creative communicators using all of the tools of their trade, including pretesting alternative messages, I think the key can be found. Conclusions My hope is not only that the state of the art of marketing research is very far advanced but also that it will take quantum leaps in the future. For whatever hazards that poses in terms of a "meaning substantiation " requirement, I think the hazards are greater if it does not happen. I am convinced that the development of reliable marketing data is in the best interests of the advertiser, the FTC, and, ultimately, the American public. Using the Benefit Chain for Improved Strategy Formulation SHIRLEY YOUNG AND BARBARA FEIGIN A new research tool helps marketers dimensionalize people's feelings about prodticts and services quantitatively as well as qualitatively. With the powerfut aid of sophisticated techniques, marketing research today is able to quantify much about people's behavior and attitudes. However, when it comes to making a link between the emotional or psychological benefit derived from a product claim or when the issue is which specific features of the product will most credibly support a claim, marketers must resort either to personal judgment or to unprojectable, unstructured research tools such as focus groups or open-end questionnaires. Some of the questions to which answers are still being sought through qualitative techniques are: 1. What psychological "pay-offs" are being linked by consumers to a given functional benefit claim? 2. For new or improved products, what are the functional and psychological benefits inferred from a given ingredient? 3. What feature (s) of a product should be stressed to make claims believable? 4. What are the psychological inferences of a given headline or piece of copy? Traditionally, material for making such important (and often exp>ensive) strategic and copy decisions has come from creative insight, intuition, and imagination. The creative machiner\' is often fueled by in-depth inter\'iews or small focused group sessions, which help uncover some of the ways in which consumers view products and how they talk about them. Yet researchers are also aware of the limitations involved in relying only on qualitative techniques. These include: data are often from limited, unrepresentative samples that cannot be • ABOUT THE AUTHORS. Shirley Young is executive vice president for research services and marketing and Barbara Feigin is vice president and manager of the Marketing and Research Department, Grey Advertising, Inc., New York City. 73 Applied Marketing quantified and evaluated objectively and thus are not projectable; responses can be biased by the group's relationship with the moderator or the members' interactions with each other; and finally, such sessions offer no way to trace precisely the linkage of consumer ideas to one another. All in all, it is a very imprecise tool with which to arrive at what may prove to be multimillion dollar choices. Now, however, there is a quantitative way to help bridge this data gap in the marketingadvertising process. Called the Grey Benefit Chain, it is a self-administered probing device that can be applied to large samples of consumers.' The Benefit Chain Procedure The Grey Benefit Chain begins with a description of the product and product attribute in question, thus: "A 'widget' that is 'stronger' than all other available 'widgets.' " Each consumer individually writes two benefits that he associates with the "stronger widget" attribute. Then, on each of two successive layers of paper with carbons, he writes two additional benefits derived from the previous benefits. This procedure produces a chain of fourteen product-related and emotional benefits. These can be analyzed quantitatively to determine how often they are mentioned, how they are linked together in consumers' minds, the saliency or distance from the original attribute (in this case "stronger widget") for each benefit, and the precise language people use to communicate about these benefits. There are four basic areas where the Benefit Chain can provide reliable data with which to answer vital questions about consumer emotions and psychological reactions: (1) emotional and psychological benefits, (2) a new or improved product, (3) claim support and credibility, and (4) advertising copy evaluation. These four areas are discussed below. Emotional and Psychological Benefits One of the most important applications of the Grey Benefit Chain is in uncovering and evaluating quantitatively the intangible benefits, or "people pay-offs," consumers derive from a specific attribute of a product or service. Let's take a hypothetical example. (For reasons of confidentiality, all of the examples used in this article are fictional.) "What can the reseairch department tell us," writes a major packaged goods marketer, "about 1. The Benefit Chain is a copyrighted technique created by Hal Lee, Management Consultant, New York City, © 1970 Hal Lee. how to talk with women about our hair spray, which combines the holding ability of ordinary sprays with a cream conditioner that leaves hair 'just washed' soft, its key competitive advantage. The creative and marketing people on our account at the agency have thought of several ways to go in the advertising of this product. Among them were that it might make the hair look and feel natural, and thus be an enhancement to personal appearance. Or, the fact that using the new spray leaves hair softer means that it is 'easier to style and manage' and, therefore, the spray saves time and effort." Applying the Benefit Chain to this problem could, through quantitative analysis, tell us which of these practical advantages consumers readily associated with this product, which psychological benefits they linked to those "top-of-mind" associations, and how they expressed these advantages in their own words. In this case, an analysis of such Benefit Chain data might show that the cosmetic approach would not be the most sensitive way of positioning the product. Rather, in terms of consumers' own perceptions and values, the best approach would be as follows: THE PRODUCT FUNCTIONAL BENEFIT PRACTICAL BENEFIT EMOTIONAL PAY-OFF Hair spray that holds and leaves hair soft Leaves hair easier to manage 1 don t need to spend so much time on hair Leaves me free to do other things 1 want to do New or Improved Product Another question for the research department might come from a major manufacturer of household products: "We plan to launch a new laundry product containing a highly effective new cleaning ingredient with disinfectant properties. What are the practical and psychological benefits that naturally derive from the disinfectant's functional benefit of providing cleainer, germ-free clothes that we should stress in our consumer advertising?" Through the use of the Grey Benefit Chain, a quantified, objective answer could be given to this key positioning question. The researcher could analyze the fi"equency with which consumers made various practical and emotional associations with the clean and germ-free idea, and further could determine how consumers linked benefits at various levels with one another. On the basis of this analysis, the researcher might find that the most relevant way to dimensionalize the new laundry product from a consumer viewpoint would be: Journal of Marketing, July 1975 74 THE PRODUCT Laundry product with new disinfectant cleaning ingredient FUNCTIONAL BENEFIT PRACTICAL BENEFIT EMOTIONAL PAY-OFF Cleaner, germ-free clothes Germ protection keeps family healthier Makes me feel like a better and more modern manager Thus, the "cleaner, germ-free" strategy could be expressed in executions emphasizing the consumers' own adult-oriented personal satisfactions. Claim Support and Credibility A third area where the Benefit Chain has been applied with considerable success is in discovering what product claims really mean to various market targets and how best to "}:)ersonalize" those appeals to make them believable and meaningful to the consumers in question. For example, "Memo to the Research Department" contains this query from a maker of a line of durable goods: "Prior research has indicated that 'value' is the most important benefit to stress in our advertising. How can we make our 'value' appeal credible to consumers? What feature(s) of our line best convey value and which should we stress?" Among the features that could be highlighted are: trade-ins, better service, low prices, product durability, bargain sales, and more or better mechanical features. Through the use of the Grey Benefit Chain, the researcher could identify' which of these directions was most meaningful from a consumer point of view and what was the most relevant and credible translation of each in terms of people's perception of value. These answers then help determine how to address the features in advertising and other forms of consumer communication. Advertising Copy Evaluation The fourth application of Benefit Chain analysis is in the controversial area of copy research. Here it is successfully used to probe exactly what consumers infer from advertising copy—from entire campaigns down to individual elements, such as demonstrations, headlines, or slogans. It can rank the success of different ways of getting an idea across, help discern whether people are coming away with the right messages, or diagnose where copy is getting them off the track. This is rooted in the chain's ability to uncover consumers' topof-mind associations with a specific stimulus, and to link those associations through less salient levels of understanding to emotional or psychological pay-offs. It is particularly helpful in evaluating copy or elements of copy to assure that they are on strategy. For example, slogans such as "It's the Real Thing" or "Only Her Hairdresser Knows for Sure" could be diagnosed via the Grey Benefit Chain to determine whether they are accomplishing the communications job for which they were designed. To Sum Up The Grey Benefit Chain adds a new quantitative dimension to our understanding of the consumer's psychological perceptions of products and services. It is a major breakthrough in answering tough marketing and advertising questions. Linking the right psychological pay-offs to the fundamental buying incentives developed for a product through traditional attitudinal strategic research can be a powerful aspect of strategy refinement. The new insight into the consumer psyche provided by the Grey Benefit Chain also has applications in the areas of claim support, new product development, and advertising copy evaluation.