Marketplace Literacy

What it measures

The scale assesses a person's basic literacy and confidence navigating market transactions, developed and tested with vulnerable, low-resource populations in field settings.

Response format

5-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree)

Scale items

• buyers choose one product over another.
• buyers choose one shop over another.
• buyers gather information before buying.
• buyers evaluate products before buying.
• sellers choose to sell what they sell.
• sellers should understand the needs of customers.
• sellers gather information about marketplaces.
• sellers price a product in a certain way.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Created and validated by Viswanathan et al. (2021) across field experiments with rural farmers in India and tribal communities in Tanzania. Reliability ranged from acceptable to strong (α = .70–.91) across administrations. Participants likely responded in their local languages rather than English, worth considering before adapting this scale to new contexts. Validity wasn't separately assessed.

Citation

Viswanathan, M., Umashankar, N., Sreekumar, A., & Goreczny, A. (2021). Marketplace Literacy as a Pathway to a Better World: Evidence from Field Experiments in Low- Access Subsistence Marketplaces. Journal of Marketing, 85(3), 113–129.

Keywords