Difficulty of the Construction

What it measures

A four-item semantic differential scale measuring how difficult, time-consuming, effortful, and complex a consumer perceives the assembly or construction of a product or display to be. Items span the difficulty, time investment, effort, and planning dimensions of perceived construction complexity. Originally used to assess the perceived effort invested in creating imaginative product displays in retail settings, the scale is applicable to any research context in which the perceived difficulty of constructing or assembling something is theoretically relevant.

Response format

7-point semantic differential

Scale items

• not at all difficult / extremely difficult
• very little time / a lot of time
• very little effort / a lot of effort
• very little planning / a lot of planning

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

Usage notes & scoring

Single alpha: α = .94 — Keh, Wang & Yan (2021, Study 3A; n = 255 MTurk). VALIDITY: Not reported. Three of the four items draw phrasing from Diehl, van Herpen & Lamberton (2015, Journal of Marketing Research 52(6), 779–799); one item ('very little planning / a lot of planning') appears original to Keh et al. (2021).

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Keh, Hean Tat, Di Wang, and Li Yan (2021). Gimmicky or effective? The effects of imaginative displays on customers' purchase intentions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49(1), 117–137.

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