Different Products with Common Features: Sales Techniques and Consumer Decisions

Different products often have some features in common. Think about a graphics processing unit used by several laptop manufacturers or the same optical zoom featured in different cameras. Marketers can decide whether and how prominently to display these features to the consumers. According to many theories of decision making, this should not be a crucial decision because adding a common attribute should have no effect on choices consumers make.

Ioannis Evangelidis, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bocconi University, questions this belief. In Points of (Dis)Parity: Expectation Disconfirmation from Common Attributes in Consumer Choice, co-authored with Stijn M.J. van Osselaer and forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research, he shows that common features can be a powerful driver of choice behavior. "We argue that earlier research has ignored the role of consumers' expectations when examining the effect of common attributes", Evangelidis and van Osselaer write.

A consumer that is making a choice between two computers considers the features that differentiate one from another, such as the random access memory or the price. Based on these features, he may have expectations about the alternatives' performance on other attributes. For instance, a consumer may expect an expensive computer to have a better graphics unit compared to a cheaper competitor. Studies conducted by Evangelidis and van Osselaer show that when a common attribute is added to the decision problem, consumers' expectations are often disconfirmed. "The alternative that the consumer would have expected to perform better on the common attribute (for example, the expensive computer) becomes relatively less attractive when he is exposed to information showing that the actual performance on the common attribute is the same across alternatives".

Marketers should take notice: providing or omitting information about a common attribute could impact sales. "For instance, sales of a cheaper laptop may go up when the laptop is shown to have the same graphics coprocessor as some more expensive alternatives. On the contrary, omitting information about a common attribute may be preferred by marketers promoting higher-priced products or premium brands".

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