Cervantes was onto something when he wrote "all comparisons are odious." According to research from professors at Stamford Graduate School of Business and Rice University, promoting a comparison in your marketing materials ("Compare our widgets to those by the leading manufacturer") is asking for trouble.
It's not uncommon for store brands or value-priced brands to ask prospective buyers to compare their products to better-known or more expensive items. But in the August issue of the Stanford Business School's Knowledgebase e-newsletter, Itamar Simonson, the school's Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing, notes that encouraging people to compare products "can easily backfire. Consumers may decide not to buy at all or to minimize what they perceive as a heightened risk instead of following the advice that the marketer had in mind.”
As the article's author, Alice LaPlante, writes, "Previous research by Simonson and others showed that in comparisons, consumers tended to put greater weight on the comparative disadvantages rather than advantages of each option. This can make the suggested option (in this case, the store brand) less attractive."
Or as Simonson says, "The mere fact that we had asked them to make a comparison caused them to fear that they were being tricked in some way.”
In another study, participants were asked to compare three digital cameras--a low-priced model with only basic features; a midrange, midpriced version; and a high-end camera with multiple extras. The plurality of participants chose the midpriced, "compromise" camera. “In this case, also, the very fact of being told to make the comparison made people much more risk averse,” Simonson says. “Marketers need to be aware that comparative selling, although it can be very powerful, is not without its risks.”
