Volume 2 - Marketing Scales Handbook

VOLUME II

The focus of the second volume of the Marketing Scales Handbook is on the scales that were published in eight top marketing journals during the first part of this decade. Technically, the new book is not a revised edition because material from the first volume was not automatically included in the second volume. In fact, as is discussed further below, the contents of this second volume are predominately new. Therefore, the first volume has hundreds of scales not contained in V. II and should not be viewed as superseded.
One may wonder why the new volume covers a shorter period than was true of the previous volume. Quite simply, scales are being reported in the journals more frequently in the 1990s than they were in the 1980s. Also, two more journals have been added to the domain of review: the Journal of Retailing and the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management . Not only are they among the top journals in the field but they cover important topics (and scales) that may not be as likely to appear in the other journals. These two new journals join the six already included in the first volume: Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Research.

To better appreciate the growth that has occurred in scale usage some characteristics of the consumer behavior sections of volume one and volume two can be compared. The first volume contained 283 substantially different consumer-related scales that came from six major marketing journals over a ten year period. V. II has 310 different scales from eight journals over a four year period. (While eight journals were reviewed, no consumer-related scales were found for the 1990 to 1993 time frame from the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.) While comparisons of these two periods is awkward because of the different number of journals and years some conclusions can still be drawn. First, multi-item scales are being used more in the 1990s than they were in the 1980s. Second, of the 283 different scales reported in the first volume only 39 were used again in the 1990 to 1993 period. Thus, 271 of the consumer-related scales included in Volume II were not part of the first volume. While these numbers may be off a little given oversights and other errors it is obvious to us that the majority of scales used during the more recent period are new. This means that the majority of the scales reported in the first volume were not used again in the domain reviewed. To what extent researchers have developed new scales when "good" ones already existed or have created new scales because no scales existed will only be understood with further examination of this database.

As with the first volume, only multi-item scales have been reviewed. One difference between the books, however, is that while the first volume included two item scales V. II had a three item minimum. Not only did this make the number of scales for review more manageable but it is also more in line with the spirit of what is meant by "multi-item" scales. Further, a minimum amount of information was required for a scale to be described. The most important information was scale items and reliability. While we wanted to discuss a scale's validity and origin, such information was much less likely to be reported in articles and was not considered critical. Also, the new volume is a little more likely than the first to at least provide references for scale uses that are not fully described due to missing information but still appear to deserve the reader's attention.

The Table of Contents can be viewed to see a listing of the scales included in V. II.

Comments: Dr. Gordon C. Bruner II

Office of Scale Research