Customer Identity Affirmation Scale

What it measures

A three-item scale measuring whether a customer perceives that an organisation recognises and affirms their capabilities in a specific identity role they associate with that organisation. Adapted from partner affirmation items developed in the close-relationships literature (Drigotas et al., 1999), the scale was redesigned for an organisational context in which customers may hold multiple simultaneous identity roles (e.g., shopper, parent, environmentalist). In the original research, participants completed the three items three times — once for each of their three most salient consumer identity roles with the focal organisation — and scores were aggregated via a multi-step weighting procedure to account for the relative strength of each identity. The parent study demonstrated that identity synergy (facilitation of multiple identities by an organisation) predicts organisational identification.

Response format

7-point scale; item stems include two blanks: organisation name (short blank) and identity role (long blank, e.g., shopper, volunteer, community member)

Scale items

• The _____ sees me as a good __________.
• The _____ thinks I have the traits and dispositions of a good __________.
• The _____ treats me like I am a good __________.

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

Usage notes & scoring

The reported alpha of .98 substantially reflects the repeated-measures design of the original study, in which each item was completed three times (once per identity role) and per-item scores were multiplied before summing. Researchers using this scale in a conventional single-administration format should treat .98 as an upper-bound estimate; true single-administration reliability is unreported. CFA on the full multi-identity model yielded excellent fit with AVE = .94. Item stems require two blanks: the shorter blank takes the organisation name; the longer blank takes the specific identity role under study. Adapted from: Drigotas, S.M., Rusbult, C.E., Wieselquist, J., & Whitton, S. (1999). Close partner as sculptor of ideal self: Behavioral affirmation and the Michelangelo phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 293-323.

Citation

Fombelle, P.W., Jarvis, C.B., Ward, J., & Ostrom, L. (2012). Leveraging customers' multiple identities: Identity synergy as a driver of organisational identification. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40(4), 587-604.

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