What are Scales?

MarketingScales.com provides assistance to those engaged in consumer research, particularly those who use measurement scales in surveys or experiments. The services provided here are useful to a very wide group of professionals who want to use sophisticated methods to study the thoughts and feelings of some group of people.  The connection with marketing in particular comes from the measures themselves having been used in research that was published in scholarly marketing-related journals (as explained further below).  Because these measures have been used and the results published, it is possible for those with a basic understanding of psychometrics to judge the quality of the scales.

There are all sorts of marketing-related metrics.  The focus here is on the type of measures used in surveys and experiments in which a score is calculated from multiple "items" (questions, statements, bi-polar adjectives) that have been answered by respondents.  We call these scales or, more precisely, multi-item scales.  The ones reviewed in the database cover hundreds of the most common constructs of interest to those doing research of consumer-related issues, things such as attitudes, motives, intentions, emotions, values, lifestyles, shopping orientations, and personality traits. Although the reviews are original, the scales themselves come from a variety of sources. The primary journals that are regularly examined for scales are the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising, and Journal of Retailing. Dozens of other journals have been consulted in writing the reviews and are referenced when relevant.