ABSTRACT

The basic premise developed in the paper is that consumers develop cognitive
structures corresponding to social roles. Perceived consumption behaviors (i.e.,
products owned, services patronized, etc.) are processed as attributes of these
social categories. These category members are defined a% product constellations
collections of symbolical lyrelated productsand are posited to be instrumental in the definition and maintenance of social identity. The study describes an
experimental methodology to quantify elements of product symbolism and
assess consensus regarding these product/role associations across consumers.
Some possible mediators of product constellation structure are also tested and
specific constellations are derived for a group of business-related occupaiions
within a population of business students. Methodological, conceptual, and managerial issues are discussed with regard to the potential for integrating work on
product symbolism with social categorization research.

Mapping Product Constellations: A Social Categorization Approach to

Consumption Symbolism
Michael R. Solomon
Rutgers University

. . .a lone figure walks the cobblestoned street.. . .

The pocket of his Burberry trenchcoat bulges mysteriously. He carries a leather case secured by a combination lock
and initialed in gold . . . he checks his watch, a handsome

goldRolex..

..

Psychology & Marketing

1988 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

VoL 5(3): 233-258 (Fall 1988)

CCC 0742-6046/88/030233-26$04.00

MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

He reaches the building. . . . As he mounts the stairs,
a tall blonde . . . opens the door at the top. She holds out a
glass of wine and beckons to him invitingly. A large, bearlike dog stands guard at her side.
"Hard day at the office, dear?" she asks.
"Absolute murder," he replies, as he strides toward a
large overstuffed sofa and kicks off his Gucci loafers.
"That damn brief still isn't done. . . . What time did you
get in?"
"About ten. After our squash game, we stopped at
that new Mexican restaurant around the comer and then I
came straight home. I've been working on my memo.
Michael, I forgot to tell you this morning that there's a
condominium board meeting scheduled for Thursday at
eight."
"Jennifer, you know I have therapy on Thursday.
The whole damn board knows I have therapy on Thursday.
Why did they schedule it then?"
"I think they need a decision on that special assessment for a sauna on the roof. . . . By the way, did I tell
you that the new people in 4 South have an AkitaV
(Piesman & Hartley, 1984, pp. 13-14, italics added).
As the above passage illustrates, product usage and consumption
activities often are used as data to infer lifestyles, personality traits,
and social roles. The importance of products in communicating social
information is well-documented (Belk, 1978; Holman 1981; Rosenfeld&Plax, 1977; Solomon, 1983).
The decoding of such messages may encompass perceptions of
tangible possessions (e.g., station wagon drivers versus sports car
drivers), leisure activities (e.g., squash players versus bowlers), or
services (e.g., diners in a "fancy" restaurant versus a "greasy spoon").
While some product categories, such as clothing, automobiles, and
furniture, are particularly rich in symbolic information, consumers
also make attributions about others based on their usage of mundane
or functional products (Barthes 1967; Haire 1950).
As is also apparent from the opening excerpt, social behavior
often is accompanied by the joint consumption of many disparate
products and services that, when taken together, appear to define a
social role. Products are not consumed in a vacuum, but instead
often play an integral part in consumers' social lives. This observation
highlights the need for consumer psychologists and marketers to
better understand how sets of consumption stimuli are used by
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consumers, both for self-definition and for the categorization of
others.
Despite this probable gestalt effect, however, most psychological treatments of product symbolism have been focused at the individual product category level. For example, motivational research
and image congruence studies tend to consider the symbolic value of
individual products in the self-definition process (Dichter, 1964;
DoUch, 1969; Grubb & Hupp, 1968). Similarly, marketing scholars
who study purchase behavior tend to concentrate on the substitutability of brands within a common product category (Wind, 1977).
By "controlling for'* the contextual effects of consumption situations and related products, the role of product sets as cultural
markers used by consumers to categorize others and to define social
reality consequently may be neglected.
Social Roles As Consumption Categories

This paper considers the psychological significance of product

collections for social labeling. It adapts categorization constructs
from cognitive psychology as it takes a first step toward examining
how the symbolic meanings imparted by these collections affect
social categorization. For one set of social roles (business occupations) and within a business student population, the study attempts
to identify product constellations: clusters of complementary products, specific brands, and/or consumption activities used by consumers to define, communicate, and enact social roles (Solomon &
Assael, 1988, provides further conceptual development).
It is proposed that consumers organize information about
product/person associations in ways that resemble other types of
cognitive categorization, where an object's attributes are used by the
perceiver to assign it to a category. For example, a wooden object
with four legs might be labeled "furniture." Similarly, observations
about the goods and services a person consumeslike personality
traits or the properties of natural objects-also may be encoded as
category attributes and used to define, retrieve, and assign meaning
to social categories.
Thus, to use the illustration from the opening passage, a perceiver might observe that a certain consumer owns a Burberry trenchcoat, a Rolex watch, a sauna, Gucci loafers, etc., and from knowledge of these attributes assign the consumer to the social category
"Yuppie." Here, the meaning of goods in a product constellation is
derived from their function as attributes of a cognitive category.
And, in many cases consumers may purchase particular products
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MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

because they desire to be labeled as members of that category (just
as they may avoid other purchases for a similar reason).
If in fact product stimuli are processed as social stimuli, the
dynamics of this fundamental categorization process must be better
understood by consumer researchers. As a start in this direction, the
present paper addresses the following empirical issues: (1) eiicitation
of the consumption stimuli, which are attributes of selected social
categories, (2) assessment of the degree of consensus across respondents regarding the composition of these categories, and (3) investigation of some factors which may mediate category structure and
content.
Social Roles
Many of the symbolic meanings of products are derived from
their association with social roles. Group identities can be conceived
as coalescing around forms of expressive symbolism (e.g.. Yuppies,
motorcycle gangs, or sports teams). The self-definitions of group
members are derived from the common symbol system to which the
group is dedicated; these symbols define the group's "personality"
(Magaro & Ashbrook, 1985).
Every member of a society who occupies a particular social
position develops a "script" for behavior in particular social situations. This script is a social role (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934). And,
each social role has associated with it a collection of products and
activities which are taken by society to define that role (McCall &
Simmons, 1982; Rose, 1962; Solomon, 1983; Solomon & Anand,
1985). Given the pervasiveness of role-playing activity, the needs
aroused in these contexts are likely to be a primary determinant of
purchase and consumption activity (Solomon & Douglas, 1987). As
noted by Levy (1964, p. 149): '*a consumer's personality can be seen
as the peculiar total of the products he consumes."

Social Categorization
Cognitive Structures
Basic research on object perception generally supports the
notion that people form cognitive structures consisting of categories.
While the specific mechanisms which mediate the acquisition and
cognitive representation of categories are still open to debate (HayesRoth & Hayes-Roth, 1977; Mayer & Bower, 1986; Medin & Schaffer,
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MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

1978; Reed, 1972; Smith & Medin, 1981), the evaluation of an
object is affected by its degree of resemblance to previously perceived stimuli. A cognitive structure consists of generalizations about
stimulus commonalities drawn from either direct personal experience
or indirect exposure via media or other cultural institutions (Cantor,
1981).
In prototype categorization models, for example, knowledge
about a category is internally represented in terms of a prototype,
which consists of "an abstract set of features commonly associated with members of a category, with each feature assigned a
weight according to degree of association with the category"
(Cantor, 1981, p. 27). In general, prototypical category members are easier to leam, classify, name, and image (Cantor &
Mischel, 1979). This paradigm has begun to be applied in consumer behavior contexts to examine how product attributes are
processed by consumers (Sujan, 1985; Loken & Ward, 1987; Ward
&Loken, 1986).
Person Categories
Within social psychology, this work has been extended in studies of stereotyping (Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, Rosenkrantz,
& Vogel, 1970; Park & Hastie, 1987). The social cognition literature
suggests that individuals "code people and their behavior in terms of
. . . a few simple cognitive categories [to simplify] what one needs
to know and look for in particular people" (Cantor & Mischel, 1979,
p. 6).
Some empirical evidence exists to support the notion that persons, or person categories, are employed as a form of cognitive
organization (Cohen, 1981; Wyer & SruU, 1981). The essential features of people who belong to these categories form stereotypes
representing an integrated image. "So for example, if you know
somebody wears tweed, drives a small cheap foreign car, and is introverted, forgetful and smart, those facts tend to go together because
they fit your professor stereotype" (Fiske, 1982, p. 6).
Levels of Abstraction
Objects also appear to be encoded at varying levels of abstraction. Researchers have consistently found that items tend to be
coded at one of three levels: (1) a superordinate level (e.g., furniture), (2) a basic level (e.g., chair), and (3) a subordinate level (e.g.,
kitchen chair). The nature of associations at each level varies; the
middle or basic level has often been found to optimally represent
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objects in terms of attribute richness and differentiation (Rosch,

1978; Sujan, 1985). These levels also appear to operate in the realm
of social cognition (Park & Rothbart, 1982).
Mediators of Constellation Clarity
Although cultural stereotypes by definition exhibit a fair
amount of consensus across people (regardless of their objective
veracity), there are likely to be variations in terms of the completeness and composition of these structures (Conover 1982; Kanwar,
Olson, & Sims, 1981). Not everyone has the same symbolic associations (if any) with a given role. Thus, it is important to explore how
representations of social categories might differ across consumers.
Some individuals might possess very vivid images of a role member,
complete with a rich set of specific brand-level associations. Others
might at best have only a veiy dim idea of the products/services a
person occupying that role might use.
Two possible mediators of constellation content are familiarity
and aspiration level. Consumers who have either been exposed to
occupants of a social role or for whom the role serves as an aspirational reference group may possess different knowledge structures
than those who lack this familiarity or aspiration.
Group members tend to be capable of finer or more articulated
discriminations within that group, while nonmembers tend to see
members as being relatively similar (Markus, Moreland, & Smith,
1985; Taylor et a l , 1978; Walker, Celsi. & Olson, 1987). By extension, this difference may result in more idiosyncratic associations
by group members due to the greater fiexibility of members' knowledge structures (Walker, Celsi, & Olson, 1987). For example, academics may disagree that all or most of their colleagues wear tweed
sportcoats with elbow patches, drive cheap foreign cars, etc.
On the other hand, out-group members may be more likely to
rely on a few prototypical product symbols of a role for their sign
value, and attach more importance to ownership of these exemplars.
Related phenomena have in fact been observed in work on anticipatory role acquisition, cultural assimilation, and compensatory symbolism. Newcomers to a role tend to purchase more stereotypical
products, and to be brand loyal to market leaders as a way to speed
acculturation (e.g., Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982; Solomon & Douglas, 1987;Zaltman&Wallendorf, 1979).
Ironically, this suggests that consumers less involved with a
social role may actually exhibit greater agreement in their product
associations. Their assumptions about the products used by role
occupants would be tempered by the relatively uniform stereotypes
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depicted by popular culture (Solomon, in press). Thus, the contents

of a product constellation, and consensus regarding its composition,
may be affected by the perceiver*s relative degree of role knowledge
and/or role aspiration. The pilot study described later in this paper
incorporated measures of both factors as a preliminary check on
such effects.
Methodological Issues for Constellation Mapping

In the descriptive study described here, free response data were

elicited to probe subjects' product associations with social roles while
avoiding the imposition of the experimenter's own structure upon
the task. This approach has been widely used in attempts to study
subjective cultural associations (Hirschman, 1980; Szalay & Deese
1978; Triandis, 1972). However, the goal of quantifying the idiosyncratic associations between products and social types made by a
consumer and then to compare sets of associations across consumers
confronts several measurement issues:
(1) Some associations may exist at the product category level
(e.g., professors listen to classical music), while others may
be specific to brands which have well-defined symbolic
"personalities" or images (e.g., professors drive Volvos).
The problem of dual level attribute elicitation has not been
an issue in prior prototype research, which elicits such
attributes as personality traits (e.g., extraversion) or
product characteristics (e.g., uses diesel fuel).
In addition, associations may vary as a function of
the abstraction of the social role in question (e.g., intellectuals versus professors versus classics professors). A tentative prediction is that more abstract roles will tend to elicit
more abstract product associations, while specific, subordinate categories will generate specific brand associations.
This general pattern has been found in other research
areas, where the abstractness of product attributes tends
to increase as the product's degree of abstractness increases
(Johnson & Fornell, 1987).
(2) A number of specific products within a product category
may be included in a constellation, though some category
members may be viewed as relatively more likely to be
associated with the category (e.g., a plumber may wear
Brut, English Leather, or Old Spice- but not Giorgio). The
probabilistic nature of category membership has been
termed a "fuzzy set" (Cantor & Mischel, 1979).
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(3) Consumers may differ in the degree to which the contents

of a product constellation are well-articulated; thus both
the contents and the volume of category members may
vary across respondents. As previously discussed, two possible mediators of this structure are role knowledge and
role aspiration-though certainly other factors (such as
imagery ability, media usage, or demographics) may well
be operative.
(4) Once these free associations (which can vary in both volume and degree of abstraction) are quantified, they must
be compared across consumers to ascertain the degree of
consensus which exists. The degree of consensus bears
upon the "strength" or cohesiveness of the constellation
and its pervasiveness as a form of social organization. To
permit nomothetic comparisons of constellation strength,
product associations thus must be converted to a single
index value which possesses metric properties. This index
must be able to combine association lists of differing
lengths, and also to provide a measure of the degree of
overlap in individual product associations across consumere.
To reiterate, the study begins to explore the following
issues:
(1) Development of a methodology to elicit and quantify
product constellations and a measure to reflect degree of
constellation consensus across consumers.
(2) Assessment of the degree of constellation consensus at
superordinate, basic, and subordinate levels of social role
abstraction.
(3) Examination of two possible mediators of constellation
consensus. These suggested mediators are role knowledge
and role aspiration, where it is predicted that subjects with
less exposure to actual role occupants and those with lower aspirations to the role will display greater levels of
consensus in their product associations.

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METHOD
Subjects
One hundred and forty-one undergraduate business students at
a large northeastern university participated as part of a course
requirement.
Procedure
Subjects read a brief description of the study, which explained
that we sometimes associate certain types of people with the products or brands they use. The study was investigating the products
that people feel are characteristic of various occupations.
Each subject was asked to list his/her product associations for
one of nine social roles. The specific role designated for each subject
was determined by random assignment. In addition, subjects responded to a variety of measures related to their familiarity and
evaluations of the role in question. These mediating measures and
demographics were administered prior to the product association
procedure.
Subjects were told that for the role designated they should first
try to form a mental picture of the person described. In particular,
they should try to picture any products this person would be likely
to own in five categories: (1) Liquor, Beer, & Wine, (2) Records &
Tapes, (3) Magazines & Newspapers, (4) Toiletries & Personal Care
Products, and (5) Automobiles. These categories were chosen on the
basis of a pretest in which subjects were given no category prompts
at all. This pretest indicated that these consumption categories
accounted for many of the free responses elicited (Solomon &
Assael, 1988). In addition, these product categories are relatively
easy to quantify because they can be divided into subcategories and
"brands" (i.e., individual recording artists, car models, etc.).
Subjects were asked to specify wherever possible specific brands
that they associated with the person in question. The instructions
stressed that there were no "correct" associations, that it was acceptable not to have any associations, and that if they had only associations at the product category level they should simply list these
associations. Consistent with past prototype research (Cantor &
Mischel, 1979; Rosch, 1978; Ward & Loken, 1986), subjects were
then given 1 i minutes to list all the products and brands they
associated with the role. Subjects were then debriefed and thanked
for their participation.
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Independent Variables

Social roles
The set of social roles selected for this study consisted of occupations. A person's occupation is a major source of information
regarding his or her expected lifestyle and is a key barometer of
specific consumption patterns as well as of class, status, and power
(Runciman, 1968). Following the procedure used by Rosch (1978)
and Cantor and Mischel (1979), the occupational categories were
developed to represent varying levels of abstraction. In order to minimize an extraneous source of variance, all occupations included were
either gender-neutral or stereotypically male.
Three judges (doctoral students) were independently presented
with a set of file cards with one occupational label typed on each.
They were asked to sort the cards so that similar occupations were
grouped together and more specific instances of an occupational
category appeared below more general examples. The number of
categories or levels to be used was not specified.
There was high consensus in this first iteration. Consistent
with past research, judges found that three levels of abstraction were
optimal to sort the cards. In some cases judges indicated ambiguity
regarding some occupations. These labels were modified, and the task
was given to another set of three judges (also doctoral students).
The second sorting task resulted in perfect agreement regarding both
similarities and levels of abstraction.
A total of three occupational hierarchies containing 27 job
labels was initially isolated (headed by Businessman, Professional,
and Blue-Collar Worker). Due to the study's complexity and the
volume of qualitative data generated, only one hierarchical category
was employed in the present study. Because the subject population
would consist largely of business students and measures of relative
role knowledge and aspiration would be included, the chosen hierarchy consisted of one superordinate category (Businessman), two
basic categories (Executive and Salesman), and six subordinate
categories (Banker, Advertising Account Executive, and Brand Manager under Executive and Insurance Salesman, Used Car Salesman,
and Clothing Salesman under Salesman).

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Dependent Variables

Quantification of free responses

In order to code responses at both the product and brand levels,
a hierarchical coding scheme was developed that assigned specific
numbere to brands within subcategories (e.g., domestic beer, sports
magazines, etc.). Wherever possible, the category designations employed by nationally syndicated consumer panels (e.g., Simmons,
TGI) were used. In some instances (especially the music category),
these commercial product surveys did not go into sufficient detail
and ad hoc categories were developed by the author and independent
judges.*
Index of consensus
A measure of agreement across subjects was required, which
allows for a comparison of free response data where the number of
responses per subject is not constrained. An existing measure known
as the Gini index was determined to possess the required properties
and was adapted for this purpose.^
The Gini index yields a coefficient of agreement which takes
into account both the number of subjects providing the same response and the number of different responses given. It results in a
standardized value which ranges between 0 and 1, with higher
proportions indicating greater degrees of cohesiveness. The formula
used to compute the Gini index is provided in the Appendix. This
index has been used extensively in studies of sociological aggregation
and in such industrial economics applications as income distribution
and market concentration. Discussions of the properties and uses of
this measure are furnished by Cronin (1979) and Schmittlein
(1983).
As was previously discussed, one of the unique measurement
issues encountered here involves the eiicitation of category members
at both the product and brand levels (e.g., "Scotch" versus "Dewars"
or sports magazine versus Sports Illustrated). To better compare such
responses, Gini indices were constructed at both aggregated and
disaggregated levels. At the disaggregated level, responses were scored
as common only if the same specific brand or model was named. At
the aggregated level, brands subsumed under a product subcategory
(e.g., imported beer or shampoo) were collapsed; responses were
scored as common if they were members of the same subcategory.

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Knowledge scale
Subjects responded to a series of five-point Likert scales assessing attitudes toward the occupation. An additional open-ended item
asked subjects to estimate how many actual members of the role
they knew personally. Two other items also concerned a priori
knowledge of this role.
The open-ended item and the two other knowledge-related
statements were combined to form a knowledge scale. Cronbach*s
alpha for this measure was 0.76. In subsequent analyses, a median
split of scale scores witliin each social role subgroup was computed
to test for the effects of low versus high role knowledge. It was
predicted that subjects who were less familiar with actual role occupants would exhibit greater agreement regarding the role's product
constellation.
Aspiration scale
Two other items assessed subjects' desire to occupy the social
role in question and were combined to form an aspiration scale.
Cronbach's alpha for this measure was 0.95. As with the knowledge
scale, median splits within each subgroup were performed to test for
the effects of low versus high role aspiration on product constellation
structure. Again, it was predicted that the low aspiration subgroup
would exhibit more consensus in the constellations elicited.
Product constellations
The actual product contents of the consensual constellations
were generated via an examination of response frequencies. A product was considered to be a category member of a constellation if it
was included by at least 10 percent of the subjects responding to the
role stimulus. This criterion is consistent with past prototype research, where typically an attribute is retained if it is cited by more
than one respondent. Also, an item was considered to be a distinct
member of a constellation if it met the cutoff criterion for a subgroup and if it was included in no more than one other constellation.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Gini Indices of Constellation Consensus

Gini indices were calculated to examine the degree of consensus

for the product constellations generated. As expected, overall levels
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MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

of agreement were greater at the aggregated level than at the disaggregated level. In order to compute the Gini indices, the responses of all
subjects within a condition must be combined into one unit of analysis. This procedure results in only one observation per cell, which
prevents the computation of conventional significance tests. Therefore, the findings presented in this pilot study are descriptive only;
no assertions are intended regarding statistical significance.
Differences in constellation consensus
The Gini indices obtained for the occupational roles at each of
three levels of abstraction broken down by the five product categories are displayed in Table 1. There do appear to be differences in
consensus across product categories and across social roles. While,
as expected, virtually all associations are stronger at the product
category level than at the brand level, one exception appears to be
Magazines & Newspapers. This disparity most likely reflects subjects'
tendencies not to think in terms of magazine categories when listing
associations; specific periodicals instead appear to exempUfy such
subheadings (e.g.. The Wall Street Journal). The same appears to be
true to a lesser extent for Records & Tapes, where individual performers are much more likely to be given than musical categories.
In contrast, the three conventional product categories tended
to elicit more than one brand as being exemplary of a social role.
This results in a greater disparity between indices at aggregated and
disaggregated levels. The range of index values obtained across categories implies that some categories are most likely quite diagnostic
for some roles and relatively meaningless for others.
Examination of the Gini index means for social roles reveals
that the curviUnear pattern obtained in the past research (i.e., consensus is greater at the basic level than at either superordinate or
subordinate levels) appears to hold for the Executive branch of the
role hierarchy but not for the Salesman branch. Within the Executive
branch this pattern can be seen at both aggregated and disaggregated
levels of analysis (n.b., this pattern is obtained despite the relatively
strong consensus for products associated with bankers, one of the
subordinate categories which appears to manifest a well-defined and
cohesive set of associations).
At the disaggregated level, the Salesman branch also displays a
curvilinear pattern, but it is opposite from the typical pattern in that
the basic level yields the lowest Gini index. This probably indicates
that the salesman prototype is more meaningful when it is modified
by knowledge ofthe specific nature ofthe sales job.
PSYCHOLOGY & MARKETING/VOL. 5, NO. 3

245

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Role knowledge as a mediator of consensus

A median split was performed on the knowledge scale for subjects within each of the nine social role conditions. Gini indices were
then computed for each half by product category and role condition.
When Gini indices for low and high knowledge subjects were collapsed across role conditions, a significant difference in consensus
was obtained. However, this difference was opposite to that predicted. Subjects above the median in role knowledge exhibited
greater agreement in their aggregated product associations, r(88) =
2.49, p < 0.01. This difference was not significant at the brandspecific level.
Role aspiration as a mediator of consensus
A median split was also performed on the aspiration scale within each social role, and mean Gini value for subjects below the
median were compared with those above the median. As predicted,
for both aggregated and disaggregated Gini analyses, subjects ynth
relatively lower desire to occupy a social role exhibited greater agreement regarding products associated with the role. This difference was
significant at the aggregated level, /(57) = 2.78, p < 0.007 and also
at the disaggregated level, /(57) = 2.45, p < 0.017.

Contents of the Product Constellations

In addition to analyzing the structural aspects of constellations,
the qualitative make-up of specific constellations also was examined.
Employing the inclusion criteria described earlier, free-response
mentions of subproduct categories and specific brands were combined across the five product categories for each of the nine social
roles examined. These constellations appear in Table 2.
Bearing in mind that these associations were made independently and that a large universe of potential product responses was
possible, a reasonable degree of consensus was observed. Although
some constellations appear to be richer than others, all contain at
least one item from each of the five product categories. It is also of
interest to note that, as had been predicted, specific brand entries
appear at a much greater rate for social roles at the subordinate level,
while the more abstract roles tend to elicit associations at the product subcategory level.
Also, while some of the product linkages can most likely be
attributed to a position of market leadership and/or obvious connecPSYCHOLOGY & MARKETING/VOL. S, NO. 3

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MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

tion with business (e.g., the pervasiveness of The Wall Street Journal), other associations were quite specific to particular roles. For
example, while The Wall Street Journal qunUfied for inclusion in five
of the nine constellations, Fortune magazine was a member of only
the banker constellation, where it was listed by fully nine out of
twenty subjects.
Further, many of the role-specific free associations which elicited high consensus were nonfunctional and apparently focused on
expressive role attributes rather than strictly functional ones. To
illustrate this, consider the following constellation members that
were unique to one role: five subjects associated a Pontiac TransAm
with Clothing Salesman, five linked Polo cologne with Banker, four
associated literary magazines with Account Executive, four assumed
Brand Manager would use Clinique skin lotion, three associated Crest
toothpaste with insurance salesman, and seventeen subjects predicted that Used Car Salesman specifically would drink Budweiser.
CONCLUSIONS
While much of the symbolism which defines social roles is embedded in material artifacts, little attention has been paid by consumer researchers to the social marker function played by systems
of products with interrelated symbolic meanings. The social categorization approach to the product constellation construct takes as its
focus a social role, and attempts to determine the attributes of this
role in terms of the products and specific brands associated with it.
This paper advocates this perspective and begins to develop an
approach which will allow for the quantification of material symbolism without sacrificing the iconic richness of specific product meanings.
The set of free responses, when quantified and calibrated across
respondents, appears to support the basic premises of the paper:
(1) It is reasonable to posit that consensual product constellations
do exist in a population; (2) These constellations can be eUcited and
quantified; and (3) The structure of the resultant constellations
appears to be mediated both by the level of role abstraction and by
such individual subject characteristics as degree of familiarity with
the role and desire to occupy that role.
It is important to recognize that the product constellations
obtained from one population of business students is quite limited in
generalizability. The results reported here are preliminary and are
not intended to be representative of any other group. They are instead intended to illustrate the development of the constellation
PSYCHOLOGY & MARKETINGA/OL. 5. NO. 3

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MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

methodology in a deliberately homogeneous sample. In fact, possible

demographic mediators of constellation consensus and structure are
of major interest for future research in this area, which hopefully
would incorporate larger and more diverse consumer samples.
In particular, the differences in terms of knowledge and aspiration obtained here merit further investigation. This was essentially a
very conservative test of such effects, since such differences are only
relative within the sample. Many of the respondents in this study
aspire to some of the more prestigious social roles examined, and perhaps are even motivated by the assumption that they will simultaneously obtain the product constellation upon assuming the role. The
constellation (which is largely a creation of marketers) in a sense
determined their level of aspiration.
An interesting future application would be to elicit constellations from a sample of actual group members. This would allow a
comparison of outgroup members' perceptions of product constellations with the product assortments really consumed by role members. Such an approach would help to clarify the role played by
advertising and the media in creating (and perhaps distorting) cultural expectations (Gerbner, et al., 1980; Gross & Morgan, 1985;
PoUay, 1986).
Neither the social role domain nor the set of product categories
employed here are intended to be exhaustive. Other image-laden
categories would also be relevant (e.g., apparel and jewelry), as would
allocations of discretionary leisure time (e.g., hobbies, restaurant
choices, travel). Similarly, many other social role hierarchies - some
occupation-based and others derived from such dimensions as taste
cultures or ethnic or subcultural differencescan be identified and
used in future research as relevant "social types" in the consumption
process are isolated.
The present findings underscore that product prototypes are
not an either/or matter; while some products are clearly associated
isomorphically with a specific role, "fuzzy sets" also exist where
symbolic meanings are shared by a small set of brands which may
be interchangeable (e.g., the pervasive co-existence of BMW and
Mercedes automobiles found in a number of constellations).
The patterns obtained in the Gini index analyses tend to parallel
the results found in previous categorization studies. Although the
sample sizes in this pilot study are too small to permit any firm conclusions, there appear to be differences in the cohesiveness of product constellations at varying levels of role abstraction. In addition,
this study's focus on responses at both product and brand levels indicates that specific brands do tend to be associated with more
specific occupational descriptions.
252

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MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

The constellations obtained also highlight the shifting symbolic

fortunes of specific products and the need to track constellations
over time. For example, subjects' responses indicate strongly that
foreign luxury cars such as the BMW and Mercedes have supplanted
the Lincoln Continental and Cadillac as the perceived vehicle of
choice for businessmen (at least within this sample). As further
evidence of a brand's symbolic erosion, the Cadillac was instead
strongly identified by this group of respondents with used car
salesmen.
To demonstrate the central role of product assortments in
identifying and perfonning social roles, the structure of product
constellations must be measured and factors that may influence the
contents of these constellations must be further examined. These
factors include effects of role knowledge, role aspiration, and such
variables as the information sources used by consumers (e.g., the
effect of television role depictions on perceived constellations).
Another possible focus could be on "anti-constellations": sets of
products which definitely should be avoided if one is to properly
function in a certain role.
As this methodology is refined, the isolation of product constellations have other strategic applications. A product's value as a
role marker should not be overlooked by marketers. Degree of
category inclusion can also be used to track the effectiveness of
positioning strategies within specific market segments. For example, one might conclude on the basis of this particular data that
The Wall Street Journal is firmly ensconced as the perceived paper
of choice for businesspeople, whereas Barron's might have reason
for worry.
One goal in marketing a new product should be to forge such
role/product associations. Consumers' constellations for abstract
roles do not appear to include many brand level members. This
may represent an opportunity for new brands or those with low
awareness levels to find an acceptable niche by association with
abstract roles.
In addition, knowledge about multi-product associations could
be used for decisions regarding joint promotions, cross-merchandising, concept testing, and appropriate contextual cues for depictions
of role types in advertisements. Psychologists could use such data
to better understand socialization processes, gift-giving, level of
aspiration, and, of course, the role of consumption stimuli in the
process of social categorization. Hopefully, the constellation construct will spur further research on the linkages between consumption phenomena and social behavior: The whole of the product
constellation is greater than the sum of its parts.
PSYCHOLOGY & MARKETING/VOL. 5. NO. 3

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MAPPING PRODUCT CONSTELLATIONS

FOOTNOTES
A complete codebook is available by request from the author.
The author is indebted to Bruce Buchanan for suggesting the use of this measure and assisting in its computation.

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The author is grateful to Henry Assael, Bruce Buchanan, Steve Gould, and Beth
Hirschman for their constructive comments. Special thanks go to Burt Holland
of the NYU Computer Center for his programming assistance.
Requests for reprints should be addressed to Michael Solomon, Department of
Marketing, School of Business. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
08903.

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APPENDIX
Calculation of the Gini Index

1. Assume n subjects, k responses.

2. Group all similar responses.
Let rj = # Ss giving response i
i = 1, k
k

3. Rank rj's from highest to lowest.

4. Pi = ri/n (normalize)
k

Pi = 1, where pi > p2 >

Pk

5.

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FALL 1988