To guarantee that the elicitation of motives resulting from comparisons between less abstract/more similar stimuli would not be neglected, subjects who chose ready meals as the first or second most likely option in either of the occasions proposed went through a third ranking step. In this step, they were asked to rank-order five manufactured ready meals—frozen pizza, canned soup, chilled Orientalstyle noodles, dried Italian-style pasta and chilled hotpot— according to the likelihood of each of them being chosen for dinner on the occasion previously considered. The products and their descriptions were presented randomly to subjects with the aid of written cards. These products were then widely available in shops and supermarkets in the Netherlands. Furthermore, according to the nationwide food consumption data available at the time, they were among the six most consumed types of ready meals in this country (Costa et al., 2002b).
Immediately following each of the two (or three) rankordering steps—meal solutions on a weekday, meal solutions on the weekend and specific ready meals—subjects were asked to supply the motives for their rankings. These were then used as the starting point for the laddering task. The elicitation of motives focused on the meals ranked first and second in the first two ranking steps, and on those positioned first, second and fifth in the third ranking step. Since we were interested to learn why ready meals were not more frequently consumed in the Netherlands, the motives for ranking this type of meal solution in the third or fourth position on a weekday or the weekend were also elicited and laddered.