Editor’s note: Bernadette DeLamar is managing partner of Nuance Research LLC, Reston, Va.

Once, many years ago, I fell in love with an automobile - a brand ideal, I suppose, communicated by words and images that resonated strongly with my particular needs and values: my nerdiness, practicality and aspirations to “coolness.” The October, 2009 article in Quirk’s by Matt Schroder (“Getting to the bottom of things”) on Infiniti’s use of laddering brought this all vividly back to me - the joy of finding and buying (secondhand of course) that small, boxy, but totally cool German car that struck such a strong chord in my psyche during those first years out of grad school.

Shortly after reading the laddering article, I noted several posts from members of various research-related groups on LinkedIn inquiring about the use of laddering techniques in B2B studies. How, some asked, does one go about (or should one even try going about) using laddering techniques among business and professional respondents - among those whose emotive linkage to a brand or feature is mitigated by an intervening variable, that is, the company or organization for which decisions are made?

Purchasing professionals do not appear to “fall in love” with copy machines or printers or office supplies. IT professionals do not seem to be enthralled with their servers or desktops or enterprise software. And, as our professors drilled into us in business school, business decisions are and should be entirely rational. One can and should build a model, construct a cost-benefit analysis, assess ROI and possibly even work through a lease/buy decision tree. In addition, successful communications designed for the business audience must be feature/function-specific.

Yet, over the years, I have interviewed countless IT decision makers and PC end users who profess to “love” their software applications - IBM’s Lotus Notes comes to mind for the cre...