Marketing Chapter 10 Ten Measurement And Attitude Scaling Questions For Review And Critical Thinkinganswers

Chapter Ten: Measurement and Attitude Scaling

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW AND CRITICAL THINKING/ANSWERS

1. Define measurement. How is your performance in a marketing research class being

measured?

2. What is the difference between a concept and a construct? In what ways is the definition of

the term variable similar or different?

3. Consider the following research questions or hypotheses. What variables need to be measured

in each?

a. Do consumers who spend more time and are more committed to Facebook spend more

money at Amazon.com?

b. What are the demographic characteristics of consumers who belong to the PowerUp

Rewards program (loyalty program) of GameStop (video games and accessories) stores?

c. The temperature inside the supermarket will determine how much time that shoppers

spend in the store such that when the store is cold they will spend less time shopping than

when the store is warm.

Chapter Ten: Measurement and Attitude Scaling

d. Product price is related positively to product quality.

e. Consumer perceptions of value from a service provider are related negatively to the

likelihood of switching service providers.

4. An official in the financial office is considering an applicant for financial aid. The officer

uses the following process. If the student has a GPA in the 90th percentile among the

admission group, 5 points are added. If the student has an ACT or SAT score in the 90th

percentile among the admission group, 5 points are added. If the student comes from a family

whose cumulative household income was less than $60,000/year for the last 3 years, 8 points

are added. If the student is from out of state, 5 points are added. What variables are being

used to determine eligibility for this financial aid? What would your approximate score be on

this scale? Is it best described as an index or a composite scale? Explain your response.

5. What role does an operational concept definition play in planning a research project?

6. Describe the concept of measurement level and the four different levels of scale

measurement.

part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a

password-protected website for classroom use.

13. Indicate whether the following measures use a nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio scale:

a. Prices on the stock market

b. Marital status, classified as “married” or “never married”

c. Whether a respondent has ever been unemployed

d. Professorial rank: assistant professor, associate professor, or professor

e. Course grades: A, B, C, D, or F

f. Blood-alcohol content

g. Number of Facebook friends

h. The color of one’s eyes

Chapter Ten: Measurement and Attitude Scaling

The size of one’s pupils

i. Time spent per day using a smartphone or tablet?

14. What is an attitude? Why do businesses place so much emphasis on measuring attitudinal

concepts?

15. Attitudes are sometimes called tri-partite, meaning they have three components. What are the

three components of an attitude?

16. Distinguish between rating and ranking. Which is a better attitude measurement technique?

Why?

17. Construct a Likert scale that would measure student attitudes toward constructing a new

business building on campus using a forced choice approach.

part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a

password-protected website for classroom use.

18. What are key differences between a five-item and a six-item Likert scale?

19. Describe the way a semantic differential scale could be constructed to measure the behavioral

component of attitudes.

20. What is a fundamental weakness of a constant sum or ranking scale?

21. In each of the following, identify the type of scale and evaluate it:

a. A U.S. representative’s questionnaire sent to constituents:

Do you favor or oppose the Fair Tax Proposal?

In Favor

□

Opposed

□

No Opinion

□

This is a simple rating scale with two categories. However, it is a non-forced choice scale that

provides a “no opinion” category.

b. How favorable are you toward the Fair Tax Proposal?

c. A psychographic statement asking the respondent to circle the appropriate response:

I shop a lot for specials.

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password-protected website for classroom use.

22. What is a multi-attribute model of consumer attitudes?

23. Look at the table. The b columns represent belief scores for two competing products. The e

column represents the evaluations of those characteristics. Compute the attitude score for

each competitor and comment on the competitive positioning of each.

Characteristic

b Brand A

b Brand B

e

Price

5

3

6

Quality

6

2

3

Convenience

1

2

4

Ease of use

3

5

1

Looks

1

7

5

The sum of b x e for Brand A is 60, and it is 72 for Brand B. The consumer has a more positive

attitude toward Brand B.

24. If a Likert summated scale has 10 scale items, do all 10 items have to be phrased as either

positive or negative statements, or can the scale contain a mix of positive and negative

statements? Explain.

25. What are the advantages of using a slider scale?

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password-protected website for classroom use.

26. [Ethics Question] A researcher thinks many respondents will answer “don’t know” or “can’t

say” if these options are printed on an attitude scale along with categories indicating level of

agreement. The researcher does not print either “don’t know” or “can’t say” on the

questionnaire because the resulting data would be more complicated to analyze and report. Is

this proper?

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

1. Define each of the following concepts, and then operationally define each one by providing

correspondence rules between the definition and the scale:

a. A good bowler

b. Purchasing intention for a hair salon

c. Consumer involvement with cars

How important are cars in your personal life?

Chapter Ten: Measurement and Attitude Scaling

How interesting are cars to you?

d. A workaholic

Most students will have a feel for this concept and conceptually define it like an alcoholic—as

someone who works all the time, who is addicted to work, or who works to excess.

Some operational definitions might be answers to “How many hours per week do you work?” or

“How many hours did you work this week?”

Or you could use a simple self-report statement, such as “Are you a workaholic?”

e. Fast-food restaurant

This is a good one for class discussion. This issue revolves around what is fast “service” and the

distinction between counter service versus service from a waiter or waitress. Of course,

McDonald’s and Arby’s are fast-food restaurants, but what about a pizza place that has pizza by

the slice and also offers made-to–order pizza?

f. Online social networking addict

g. Attitude toward leaving advice (reviews) on Tripadvisor.com

Chapter Ten: Measurement and Attitude Scaling

part, except for use as permitted in a license distributed with a certain product or service or otherwise on a

password-protected website for classroom use.

It can be measured the following way:

“Leaving a review on Tripadvisor.com is helpful.”

strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree

2. Use the ACSI scores found at http://www.theacsi.org to respond to this question. Using the

most recent two years of data, test the following two hypotheses:

a. American consumers are more satisfied with breweries than they are with wireless

telephone services.

b. American consumers are more satisfied with discount and department stores than they are

with automobile companies.

c. American consumers are most satisfied with Southwest Airlines relative to other airlines.

3. Go to http://www.queendom.com/tests. Click on the lists of personality tests. Take the

hostility test. Do you think this is a reliable and valid measure of how prone someone is to

generally act in a hostile manner? Would it be ethical to assign prospective employees a

hostility score to be used in a hiring index based on results from this or a similar test?