The CATMC is one of the earliest validated multi-item instruments for measuring consumer attitudes toward marketing institutions, marketing practices, and the consumerism movement. Barksdale and Darden (1972) developed the scale to track consumer sentiment across six dimensions of the marketing system at a time when the consumerism movement was gaining political and social momentum. Attitudes Toward Products captures beliefs about product quality, safety, durability, and value; Attitudes Toward Advertising captures beliefs about the truthfulness, social value, and manipulativeness of advertising; Attitudes Toward Pricing captures beliefs about the fairness of prices, price deception, and price competitiveness; Attitudes Toward Retailing captures beliefs about retail service quality, convenience, and retailer honesty; Attitudes Toward Marketing Ethics captures beliefs about the ethical conduct of businesses in marketing practices; and Support for Consumerism captures endorsement of consumer protection movements, regulation, and collective consumer advocacy. The CATMC provided the first empirical evidence that consumer attitudes toward marketing were systematically negative across multiple marketing domains in the early 1970s, and that attitudes toward products were generally more favourable than attitudes toward pricing, advertising, and retailing. The scale has been used to track longitudinal shifts in consumer sentiment toward marketing institutions and to compare attitudes across demographic segments and countries. It is particularly relevant to research on consumer policy, marketing ethics, corporate social responsibility, and anti-consumption.
Barksdale, H.C., & Darden, W.R. (1972). Consumer attitudes toward marketing and consumerism. Journal of Marketing, 36(4), 28–35.
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