Attribution of Blame

What it measures

A three-item semantic scale designed to measure the extent to which a customer believes that a certain party is responsible for a particular service failure.

Response format

7-point semantic differential

Scale items

• The __________ was: not at all responsible for the failure / totally responsible for the failure
• Overall, the service failure was: in no way __________'s fault / completely __________’s fault
• To what extent do you blame __________ for what happened? not at all / completely

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

Usage notes & scoring

Internal consistency (alpha = .87) was reported in the primary study. Convergent and discriminant validity evidence was provided by the original authors.

Citation

Grégoire, Yany and Robert J. Fisher (2008), “Customer Betrayal and Retaliation: When Your Best Customers Become Your Worst Enemies,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36 (2), 247-261.

Keywords