ACCEPTANCE AND ACCEPTABILITY
A subtle but distinct difference exists in the linguistic meaning of the
words “acceptance” and “acceptability.” According to G. Hobson (per-
sonal communication), “acceptability suggests that some criterion is ap-
plied to differentiate those products that could be sold from those that
could not, whereas acceptance does not imply any aspect involving a
range in quality.” In other words, acceptance describes a general state
of a product, whereas acceptability describes whether a particular prod-
uct is accepted by a consumer in his or her particular circumstances,
e.g., status, price, personal preferences, as can be taken from the graph-
ical representation (Figures 7.2 and 7.3).
DECOMPOSITION OF ACCEPTABILITY
So, when we are talking about acceptability, some criterion has to be
set to judge the general acceptance or assigned quality of a product. As
such, acceptability covers both product aspects (product research) and
consumer aspects (consumer and market research) at the same time. To
be properly applicable in practice, both types of aspects should be and
can be studied separately without (too much) interference of one an-
other.
Throughout this chapter this criterion is called “quality limit.” It stands
for the criterion a consumer applies to the quality aspect involved to de-
termine the acceptability of a given product.
Consumer Applied Criteria
The criteria a particular consumer applies to the assigned quality in
determining the product’s acceptability are frequently adapted to the
situation of the individual. To obtain a more general view on accept-
ability criteria, consumer research has to aim at particular groups of con-
sumers with roughly the same applied criteria in the same situation.
Based on these groups of similar consumers the market strategies of
companies selling commodities are defined. That is, advertisement tries
to affect the criteria applied by that group of consumers. Price policies
try to lower the consumer’s financial threshold. Hence, both efforts af-
fect the acceptability of the product in a different way. All these actions,
however, alter neither the intrinsic properties nor the assigned quality.
Consequently, they have no effect on the description of product behav-