Measurement in Marketing

Introduction

Scientific truth, according to the positivist mode of reflection¹, is achieved by making theoretical hypotheses, that is proposals built on the basis of rigorous reasoning, ideas organized according to an original scheme and then verified, validated either by experience in the experimental sciences or by field research in the social sciences. This is the structure of the scientific method defined as hypothetico-deductive. These hypothetical ideas are expressed in words or expressions that refer to concepts (or constructs) that are rarely directly observable or measurable (for example, in marketing: brand loyalty, satisfaction, impulse buying, price acceptability, well-being, etc.; in social psychology: altruism, attribution, conformism, deviance, etc.).

The quality of quantitative research, particularly when it attempts to investigate the causes of a phenomenon, depends on a set of factors such as the field of study, the design of the questioning, the nature and size of the sample, the method of administration, the measures selected, etc. Although these aspects are complementary and therefore interrelated, this book deals particularly with the specificities and methodological choices relating to measurement scales, which are very important and lead to a multitude of reflections, conditioning the very quality of investigations.

Indeed, the research is largely based on respondents’ responses to questionnaires using evaluation tools (scales) that allow them to express ...