ABSTRACT

Customer value mapping (CVM) emerged from the total quality management movement, in which rms endeavored to measure and deliver superior functional performance more cost-eectively. Authors such as Monroe (2002) and Gale (1994) argue that buyers should and do evaluate competitive products by calculating the ratio of product performance to price (a ratio calculation). For example, Monroe summarizes the ratio view that “buyers’ perceptions of value represent a mental trade-o between the quality or benets they perceive in the product relative to the sacrice they perceive by paying the price: Perceived value = perceived bene-ts (gain) divided by perceived sacrice (give)” (p. 104). The alternative, economic value modeling (EVM), stems from the industrial purchasing world in which rms estimated the economic savings they would realize by buying one rm’s product compared with the products of competitive suppliers. Here researchers such as Forbis and Mehta (1981), Dodds, Monroe, and Grewal (1991), Rust and Oliver (1994), and Hinterhuber (2004) argue that value is the utility of quality minus the disutility of price (a dierence calculation).