Customer Attachment Anxiety Scale

What it measures

A four-item, seven-point Likert-type scale measuring a customer's attachment anxiety in the context of a commercial relationship — specifically, the extent to which a customer worries excessively about being abandoned or undervalued by a company. Adapted from the Experiences in Close Relationships scale for commercial relationship contexts, the scale was developed and validated by Mende and Bolton (2011) across three service settings before being applied in a large-scale field study with 1,199 North American insurance customers. Each item contains a blank into which the company name is inserted. High scores indicate that the customer places excessive importance on being liked and valued by the firm and fears the relationship may be withdrawn or neglected.

Response format

7-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree); company name inserted in blanks

Scale items

• I worry about being abandoned by _____ as a customer.
• _____ changes how it treats me for no apparent reason.
• I worry that _____ doesn't really like me as a customer.
• I worry that _____ doesn't care about me as much as I care about it.

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

Usage notes & scoring

This scale is a commercial-relationship adaptation of romantic attachment anxiety, grounded in attachment theory. Development and initial validation across three service settings was reported by Mende, M. & Bolton, R.N. (2011). Why attachment security matters: How customers' attachment styles influence their relationships with service firms and service employees. Journal of Service Research, 14(3), 285-301. In the focal study (N=1,199), attachment anxiety (this scale) and attachment avoidance (companion scale, ID 2164) together predicted customers' preference for closeness, repurchase intentions, and cross-buying behaviour over a three-year period, controlling for established relationship quality antecedents. Alpha of .80 is at the minimum inclusion threshold; users should be aware reliability may vary across service contexts. The companion scale measuring the comforting dimension of customer attachment is ID 2164. Conceptually related but construct-distinct from general attachment anxiety (ID 733, Johnson et al.), which measures relational attachment anxiety in personal relationships rather than commercial ones.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Mende, M., Bolton, R.N., & Bitner, M.J. (2013). Decoding customer-firm relationships: How attachment styles help explain customers' preferences for closeness, repurchase intentions, and changes in relationship breadth. Journal of Marketing Research, 50(1), 125-142.

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