A Test of the Effects of Competition on Consumer Brand Selection Processes Michel Laroche Michael Hui Lianxi Zhou CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY This paper addresses zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA and tests the influence of competition on attitude formation and intention formation within the consumers’ choice set. The results of an empirical study confirm that the consumer’s attitude toward a brand is not only afunction ofhis/her cognitive evaluations ofthat particular brand, but also afinction of his/her perceptions of the competing brands within the choice set. Similarly, purchase intention formation is found to be determined by attitudes toward both the focal brand and toward the close competitors of thefocal brand within the consumer’s choice set. The best structural equation model is found to be the model that incorporates both of these competitive eficts. J BUSN RES 1994. 31.171-181 Please address all correspondence Michel Laroche, Department of Marketing, Concordia University, West, Montreal Canada Journal of Business Research 31, 171-181 (1994) Q 1994 Elsevier Avenue of the Americas, York, NY ward that brand. However, the results cannot be used to ascertain exist simultaneously that, controlling atti- tude formation, case, we may conclude makes comparisons brand attitudes, other competing paper is to test the findings using single model; focal within single con- ceptual framework where all the effects can be tested simul- taneously. entire paradigm rather than on a part of the latter (i.e., only cognition+affect, models are tested amine the effects of competing brands on both the attitude mation and the intention formation Brand Competition within a Choice Set Within the C-A-B paradigm, brand competition has often been limited to a rank order of attitudes or intentions associated with different brands in a choice set; the consumer tends to choose the alternative which has the highest attitude or intention score (Sheppard, Hartwick, and Warshaw, 1988). This perspective on brand competition assumes that the formation of attitude and the formation of intention toward a specific focal brand are independent of other competing brands. In other words, the competitive effects of one brand on another can be cap- tured by just a comparison of their attitude or intention scores, and, for each brand, its attitude and intention scores are not influenced by the consumer’s cognition and affect regarding the other brands in the choice set. Recent studies on consumer choice, however, seem to sug- gest the opposite. Lynch and his coauthors have argued that the consumer’s judgments are relative in nature and that they are affected by the context under which judgments are made (Lynch, Chakravarti, and Mitra, 1991). One of the context vari- ables is the membership of a choice set. A product may be judged ISSN 0148.2963/94/$7.00