Utilitarian and hedonic products are listed as stimuli in the
main experiment. In the past, researchers have used a variety
of products to represent these two categories. For example,
Hirschman and Holbrook (1982) suggested that washing
machines and other durables are utilitarian products, whereas
movies and fashion items are hedonic.
Laundry detergent, AA batteries and film are selected as
utilitarian products, while chocolates, ice-cream and biscuits are selected as hedonic products. With the exception of
biscuits, these product categories are the same as those
studied by Chandon et al. (2000). This degree of replication
helps to ensure consistency. The utilitarian and hedonic
nature of the pre-selected product categories was pretested
(see the Appendix).
Within each of these product categories, brands of
relevance to Australian consumers are selected.
Furthermore, only brands with a high level of customerbased
brand equity are used as the congruency effects are
expected to be strongest for high equity brands. High equity
brands tend to be well-known national brands with high
market shares. These were identified from pretests based on
the brands with the highest market shares in Australia for each
product category, as reported by Retail World (Burton, 2001).