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.

Representative items

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

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.