This scale measures how closely a shopper believes a particular product resembles the best option available among alternatives. Davis (2023) used it while participants imagined shopping with third-party ratings of competing products, across a main study and a supplemental replication.
9-point semantic differential (e.g., not similar at all / very similar)
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Reliability was strong across both administrations (α = .861, Study 4; α = .903, Supplemental Study 5; Davis 2023, p. 1086, web appendix p. 46). A factor analysis in Study 4 showed the items loading distinctly from a separate six-item product evaluation measure, supporting convergent and discriminant validity. As administered, items are reverse-scored to yield a difference measure rather than a similarity measure; a generic product category term fills the blank. Named identically to an existing entry (ID 1163, Desai and Keller 2002) which measures similarity between two named brands' image and features; this scale instead measures similarity of a single product to the best available alternative, so it is retained under a construct-descriptive name to avoid confusion.
Davis, Derick F. (2023), "Distributions Distract: How Distributions on Attribute Filters and Other Tools Affect Consumer Judgments," Journal of Consumer Research, 49 (6), 1074-1094.
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