Developed by Dr. Gordon C. Bruner II, (Professor of Marketing at Southern Illinois University), the Marketing Scales website provides assistance to those want to use scientific methods of measurement to understand what people think and feel. This is a continuation of work that began over 20 years when Dr. Bruner and Dr. Paul J. Hensel noted that there was no easy-to-use resource for those trying to find multi-item measurement scales for use in marketing-related research. They set out to develop such a resource and their efforts ultimately led to the publication of the Marketing Scales Handbook. It was published by the American Marketing Association in 1992 and was the first collection of marketing-related measurement scales ever published. That was followed over the next 15 years by several more volumes as well as changes in co-authors and publishers. By the time Volume 5 was ready to be released, changes in technology and the world of publishing led Dr. Bruner (the only remaining author) to provide the book solely in electronic form. A website was created for that purpose and was the proto-type for the current site.
The primary service provided by the Marketing Scales website is a database of 2600+ multi-item measurement scales. Instead of being hidden away in hard to find and difficult to decipher academic journals, these scales have been located, reviewed, and are available in one place. Searching the database is infinitely faster than attempting to find scales in academic journals and then taking the time to determine a scale’s quality and its composition (the questions/items in the scale and the response format).
Finally, the site provides other benefits beyond the database. The Lexicon page is useful for understanding the statistical and psychometric terminology routinely employed in the reviews. Likewise, the Links page may be useful in identifying other sources of scale-related information on the web. If your interest is in having a set of scale reviews in e-book form, then purchase Volume 5 of the Marketing Scales Handbook, the only one of the previously published books still available. Of course, check out the News page to see what is happening behind the scenes and what is planned for the future.