Attitude Toward a Low Price Guarantee (Protection Focus)

What it measures

A three-item scale measuring the degree to which a consumer believes that retailers offering low price guarantees do so primarily to protect buyers against price fluctuations and offer refunds when better prices are found elsewhere, rather than to signal genuine lowest-price status. This protection-focus framing positions the guarantee as a defensive consumer safeguard — a post-purchase insurance mechanism — rather than a credible market signal of price competitiveness.

Response format

7-point Likert

Scale items

• By giving a Low Price Guarantee, a retailer mainly promises that it will protect consumers from fluctuating market prices.
• A Low Price Guarantee-offering retailer may not necessarily have the lowest price in the market, but the guarantee indicates that it will issue a price refund when a lower market price is found.
• I am primarily attracted to a retailer that offers a Low Price Guarantee because I feel confident that in case I find a lower price elsewhere, I will be protected.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Multiple reliability estimates: α = .75 (Study 1), α = .87 (Study 2), α = .86 (Study 3A), and α = .90 (retailer-specific version) — Dutta, Biswas & Grewal (2011). The general version achieved acceptable reliability in Studies 2 and 3A; the retailer-specific adaptation is the strongest. VALIDITY: Factor analyses across studies confirmed clean separation between the protection-focus and information-focus items. NOTE: Available in a general version and a retailer-specific version (replace generic retailer references with the specific retailer's name). Companion to the information-focus version of the scale (ALPGI). Both scales should ideally be administered together when the goal is to assess which interpretation of the guarantee mechanism is dominant for a given consumer segment.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Dutta, Sujay, Abhijit Biswas, and Dhruv Grewal (2011). Regret from postpurchase discovery of lower market prices: Do price refunds help? Journal of Marketing, 75(6), 124–138.

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