Analysis of Similarity and Preference Data

Abstract

Similarity data in management research are typically collected in order to understand the underlying dimensions determining perceptions of stimuli such as brands or companies. One advantage of such data is that it is cognitively easier for respondents to provide subjective assessments of the similarity between objects than to rate these objects on a number of attributes which they may not even be aware of. Furthermore, when asking respondents to rate objects on attributes, the selection of the attributes proposed may influence the results while, in fact, it is not clear that these attributes are the relevant ones.