Entitativity of the Brand

What it measures

A five-item scale measuring the degree to which multiple units of a brand's product are perceived as forming a coherent, unified entity with shared goals, coordinated functioning, and meaningful similarities — the property of entitativity applied to brand products. Items contain blanks for the product or brand name and assess unity of purpose, collective goal orientation, consistency of performance, and meaningful intra-category similarity. Developed for research on how product grouping affects perceived efficacy.

Response format

7-point Likert

Scale items

• Each __________ seems to be unified around the same goal.
• It's easy to imagine __________ working together towards one goal.
• Each __________ clearly has the same goal as other __________.
• Each __________ performs the same way as other __________.
• Each __________ seems to have meaningful similarities with one another.

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

Usage notes & scoring

FILL-IN-THE-BLANK FORMAT: Blanks should be replaced with the product or brand name (e.g., 'Advil pill', 'supplement capsule'). Alpha ranged from .90 to .95 across multiple studies including pretests and main studies — Vanbergen, Irmak & Sevilla (2020). VALIDITY: Not reported. Scale developed by the authors drawing on social psychology entitativity literature (Campbell 1958; Hamilton & Sherman 1996). Items used as manipulation checks and as mediators across studies.

Citation

Vanbergen, Noah, Caglar Irmak, and Julio Sevilla (2020). Product entitativity: How the presence of product replicates increases perceived and actual product efficacy. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(2), 192–214.

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