Volume 5 - Marketing Scales Handbook

VOLUME V

Volumes 1 to 4 of this series contained multi-item psychometric scales that had been included in articles published in the top marketing journals between 1980 and 2001. This fifth volume covers the scales that were reported in articles published from 2002 to 2005. As with the earlier books, this one should not be viewed simply as a revision of the previously published material, in fact, the contents of this volume are predominately new. The only scales reported in the previous volumes that were reported in this volume are ones that were used again during the review period. Thus, the first four volumes have hundreds of scales not contained here. Given that, V5 should be viewed as complementing the preceding volumes rather than superseding them.

A key difference in this volume and the first four is that is predominantly composed of scales that were used with consumers. By the time V4 came to be published it was clear that one bound book could not contain both consumer scales (CB) as well as those for use in studying aspects of organizational behavior (OB). At about the same time, a reduction in the number of authors led to a refocusing of efforts. That led to just CB scales being reviewed. Unfortunately, the review of OB scales was discontinued. Another difference in this volume is that advertising-related scales are included along with the other scales in one section. (Previous volumes segregated them in different sections.)

To be included in this volume, scales had to be composed of three or more items, have empirical evidence of their psychometric quality, and were treated by their users as reflective measures rather than formative. With those general rules in mind, a review was conducted of the many hundreds of articles published in six of the top marketing journals between 2002 and 2005. Ultimately, information from about 270 of those articles led to the 716 scales composing this volume.

A rule followed in the Marketing Scales Handbook series has been to attempt to describe multiple uses of a scale in the same review. The problem has been deciding when two scales that are not exactly the same in their content should be included in the same review. The simple answer is that uses were combined into the same review when they appeared to be measuring the same construct and had about half or more items in common. In some cases, this meant that multiple reviews were written for the same construct or very similar ones because the scales for measuring the construct were substantially different in content (e.g., #393-#399, #483-#488, #679-#683). In other cases, the rule about similarity of items was very difficult to apply. This was most notably true with the semantic differential versions of Attitude Toward the Ad (#59) and Attitude Toward the Product/Brand (#108). Although these two have been the most popular constructs to measure in scholarly marketing research using multi-item scales, there has been little agreement on how to measure them. They both have been measured dozens of ways over the last few decades. Several years of working with the hodgepodge of Attitude Toward the Ad scales led to an initial grouping (Bruner 1998). Unfortunately, a similar effort to unravel the jumble of scales for measuring Attitude Toward the Product/Brand has not been as successful in finding subgroups that could be reviewed separately. Given that, those scales and several others have been written up together because, at least on the surface, they appear to be measuring the same construct in roughly the same way (multiple semantic differentials) and authors have been cherry picking from a reasonably similar pool of items.

The Table of Contents can be viewed to see a listing of the scales included in V5. (For more information about the book as well as a free sample and explanatory videos, see the Marketing Scales website.)

Comments: Dr. Gordon C. Bruner II

Office of Scale Research