Emergent Nature

What it measures

An eight-item scale measuring a consumer's capacity to envision how nascent product or service ideas could be developed and applied in real-world contexts. Items assess the ability to mentally elaborate on incomplete ideas, visualise how new concepts would fit into everyday life, fill in missing details, project how products could serve future needs, experiment with novel ideas, identify patterns in complexity, and imagine product improvements. The construct — termed 'emergent nature' — reflects a combination of creative and analytical processing abilities that distinguish consumers particularly well-suited to generating and evaluating new product concepts in co-creation contexts.

Response format

Likert (format not specified; approximately 6-point based on reported mean/SD)

Scale items

• When I hear about a new product or service idea, it is easy to imagine how it might be developed into an actual product or service.
• Even if I don't see an immediate use for a new product or service, I like to think about how I might use it in the future.
• When I see a new product or service idea, it is easy to visualize how it might fit into the life of an average consumer.
• If someone gave me a new product or service idea with no clear application, I could 'fill in the blanks' so that I could see how it could be used.
• Even if I don't see an immediate use for a new product or service, I like to imagine how people in general might use it.
• I like to experiment with new ideas for how to use products and services.
• I like to find patterns in complexity.
• I can picture how products and services of today could be improved to make them more appealing to the average consumer.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Single reliability estimate: α = .93 (Study 1, n not specified) — Hoffman, Kopalle & Novak (2010). VALIDITY: Comprehensive validation including evidence of unidimensionality, discriminant validity versus related constructs (creativity, need for cognition, openness to experience), and predictive validity showing that high emergent nature consumers generate better new product concepts. NOTE: Response format not explicitly described but appears to be approximately 6-point based on the reported study mean of 36.99 and SD of 9.78 for 8 items. Companion to the Creativity scale (CRTV) from the same study — both scales were developed and validated together to identify the ideal consumer co-creator profile.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Hoffman, Donna L., Praveen K. Kopalle, and Thomas P. Novak (2010). The 'right' consumers for better concepts: Identifying consumers high in emergent nature to develop new product concepts. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(5), 854–865.

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