The interviews started with a brief description of the
tasks—rank-order of stimuli, elicitation of motives and
laddering—and the type of questions involved. Namely,
the why is this important to you line of questioning, typical
of the laddering technique (Reynolds & Gutman, 2001),
was introduced. Subjects were also told that there were
no wrong or right answers, given that the interviews purpose
was solely to gain a better understanding of how consumers
viewed the topic of meal preparation. Throughout
the elicitation task the interviewer wrote down the rankorders
and the underlying motives provided. A five-minute,
warm-up conversation regarding the rankings and the
cooking/eating habits of subjects preceded the actual
laddering task. At the end of the interview, the interviewer
summarised the main lines of reasoning supplied and asked
if there was anything else subjects would like to add. Finally,
subjects were thanked for their time and rewarded with
a gift voucher