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1 

Product characteristics. Does the product need to be physically tried or touched 

before it is bought?

2 

Familiarity and confidence. Considers the degree the consumer recognises and 

trusts the product and brand.

3 

Consumer attributes. These shape the buyer’s behaviour – are they amenable to 

online purchases in terms of access to the technology skills available and do they 

no longer wish to shop for a product in a traditional retail environment?

In his book, de  Kare‑  Silver describes a method for ranking products. Product char‑

acteristics, familiarity and confidence are each marked out of 10, and consumer 

attributes are marked out of 30. Using this method, he scores products as shown in 

Table 8.6.

De  Kare‑  Silver states that any product scoring over 20 has good potential, since the 

score for consumer attributes is likely to increase through time. Given this, he suggests 

companies will regularly need to review the score for their products.