Customer Attachment Comfort Scale

What it measures

A four-item, seven-point Likert-type scale measuring the ease and comfort a customer feels when depending on or being emotionally close to a company. Adapted from the Experiences in Close Relationships scale for commercial relationship contexts and developed and validated by Mende and Bolton (2011) across three service settings. Each item includes a blank for the company name. In its natural scoring direction, high scores indicate that the customer finds closeness and dependence on the company comfortable and natural. When all items are reverse-scored, the scale functions as a measure of customer attachment avoidance — the extent to which a customer prefers emotional distance from the company — which is how the scale was operationalised by Mende, Bolton, and Bitner (2013).

Response format

7-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree); company name inserted in blanks. When reverse-scored, the scale measures customer attachment avoidance.

Scale items

• It is a comfortable feeling to depend on _____.
• I am comfortable having a close relationship with _____.
• It's easy for me to feel warm and friendly toward _____.
• It helps to turn to _____ in times of need.

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

Usage notes & scoring

This scale is the companion to the Customer Attachment Anxiety Scale (ID 2163) and together they capture the two primary dimensions of adult attachment style — anxiety and avoidance — as applied to commercial customer-firm relationships. Development and initial validation across three service settings was reported in 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 large-scale study, the authors reverse-scored all four items and labelled the resulting measure 'customer attachment avoidance'. Researchers should decide which scoring direction suits their research framing before data collection. Alpha of .80 is at the minimum inclusion threshold; users should expect variability across service contexts.

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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