AN INVESTIGATION OF PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF MARKET RESEARCH MEASURES: THE CASE OF PURCHASE INTENTION SCALES
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the reliability, construct validity, and discriminant quality of selected purchase intention measures. Also, the aim is to examine how these psychometric properties vary with different types of intent-to-buy scales and different product categories. Finally the objective is to investigate the extent to which these scales are contaminated by response style biases. Specifically, the selected scales are 3, 5, 7 and 11-point purchase intention scales, Juster's purchase-probability scale, and Wells' readiness-to-buy scale. The performance of these scales are investigated across selected durable goods, services, packaged goods and new product concepts. The two response style biases which the effects are examined are Yeasaying-Naysaying and Social-Desirability. Two sets of survey data are collected for the analysis. First set of data is based on a test-retest experimental design. The second set of data is collected through a survey which requires each respondent to rate all the products on all the scales. For the assessment of reliability test-retest, causal modeling and analysis of variance approaches are used. Construct validity is investigated through causal modeling approach. Analysis of variance, and interscale correlations provide the analysis for discriminant quality. The results suggest that purchase intention scales can be regarded as reliable measures which do possess a considerable amount of discriminant quality and that there is agreement among the scales in measurement of the "purchase intention" construct. The findings show no particular scale point which perform the best with respect to the psychometric properties investigated. On the other hand, the psychometric performance of the scales vary more systematically across different product categories indicating the existence of a contextual effect due to the product or service investigated.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Marketing
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