Perceptual maps of photographs of carbonated beverages created by traditional and free-choice profiling

Perceptual maps of how consumers view a set of products are often constructed by profiling methods. One of the most common profiling techniques used is attribute rating analysis (ARA) in which consumers evaluate products on a prespecified set of attributes. Free-choice profiling (FCP) allows consumers to describe and evaluate products in their own terminology. The objective of this study was to compare the perceptual maps created from ARA and FCP. Forty-two persons evaluated photographs of twelve carbonated beverage brands using 13 specified attributes (ARA). Forty-four different persons, using the same product set, made evaluations based on their own criteria (FCP). The resulting perceptual maps were similar and dimensions from the two maps were significantly correlated. Large group variance in the Procrustes analysis further confirmed similarity of the perceptual maps. However, for these data the consumer FCP elicited more explicit attributes to describe the soda brands than the ARA.