What is Marketing Scales?

Our mission is to provide assistance to researchers who want to use precise measures to study the thoughts and feelings of a group of people.  The primary feature of the site is the scales database, the world's largest source of consumer insight measures.  But, these are not just any measures; they are the best ever created since they come from research that has been published in scholarly journals associated with the academic discipline of marketing.  Because the results of studies using these measures have been published, it is possible for us to judge the quality of the scales and report it to others who might benefit from using them.  Our hope is that researchers will find it easier than in the past to build on the work of scholars and adopt their reliable measures rather than spending time themselves developing scales from scratch or, worse, using simpllstic survey questions of dubious quality.

There are well over 2800 scales in the Marketing Scales database at this time.  These measures are the type in which a score is calculated from responses to multiple items (e.g., survey questions).  This type of scale is much more precise than a 1-item measure when studying psychological constructs such as attitudes, motives, intentions, emotions, values, lifestyles, shopping orientations, and personality traits. The extra precision of these scales increases the accuracy of measurement and, thereby, should improve the quality of decisions based upon their results. 

Although the primary focus of the studies that are reviewed here is the “consumer,” that should be interpreted very broadly.  Hundreds of scales in the database are amenable for use when studying segments of people such as patients, students, clients, voters, and group members. Further, many of these measures are useful when studying people in organizational contexts such as managers, sales people, staff, as well as other employees and professionals. 

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