ABSTRACT

Margin management is an important aspect of marketing mix decision-making. We argue that when production costs increase, product managers must eventually choose among three alternatives: raising selling prices, reducing pack quantities, or decreasing product quality. Thus, the purpose of this research is to ascertain consumer trade-off preferences – among product price, pack quantity and product quality – for different types of FMCG products. Adopting a choice-based conjoint analysis research design, the study used three samples of American consumers. It was found that for each of the three FMCG product categories tested, quality is the product attribute most favoured by the respondents. For two of the three products, pack quantity was rated the least important product attribute, suggesting that manufacturers may have a better chance of maximising profit by reducing pack quantity, rather than increasing price or lowering quality. In the context of margin management, this is, to our knowledge, the first study to examine consumers’ preferences related to the trade-off between product price, pack quantity and product quality.

摘要

利润管理是营销组合决策的一个重要方面。我们认为，当生产成本增加时，产品经理最终必须在三种选择中做出选择：提高销售价格、减少包装数量或降低产品质量。因此，本研究的目的是确定消费者对不同类型的 FMCG 产品的权衡偏好——产品价格、包装数量和产品质量。采用基于选择的联合分析研究设计，该研究使用了三个美国消费者样本。结果发现，对于所测试的三个快速消费品产品类别中的每一个，质量都是受访者最喜欢的产品属性。对于三种产品中的两种，包装数量被评为最不重要的产品属性，这表明制造商可能有更好的机会通过减少包装数量而不是提高价格或降低质量来实现利润最大化。在利润管理的背景下，据我们所知，这是第一个研究消费者与产品价格、包装数量和产品质量之间的权衡相关的偏好的研究。