Consumer Marketplace Bargaining Confidence

What it measures

Six Likert-type statements measure a consumer's familiarity with persuasion tactics used by marketers and their confidence in handling those tactics. Items cover recognising too-good-to-be-true offers, identifying strings attached to deals, understanding bargaining tactics, detecting sales pressure, seeing through gimmicks, and separating fact from fantasy in advertising. This represents the bargaining dimension of a multidimensional consumer self-confidence instrument.

Response format

7-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree)

Scale items

• I know when an offer is "too good to be true."
• I can tell when an offer has strings attached.
• I have no trouble understanding the bargaining tactics used by salespersons.
• I know when a marketer is pressuring me to buy.
• I can see through sales gimmicks used to get consumers to buy.
• I can separate fact from fantasy in advertising.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Alpha of .83 was reported in Study 3 (n=252 undergraduates). Two-week test-retest stability for the broader instrument ranged from .60 to .84. Content, convergent, discriminant, predictive, and known-group validity were all examined and supported across multiple studies.

Citation

Bearden, W. O., Hardesty, D. M., & Rose, R. L. (2001). Consumer self-confidence: Refinements in conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Consumer Research, 28(1), 121–134.

Keywords