Service Provider Superiority via Customer Knowledge

What it measures

Three items capture a customer's belief that a particular service provider is the best option specifically because it knows what the customer wants and understands their needs better than competing providers. del Rio Olivares et al. (2018) created the scale for a laboratory experiment with 284 U.S. MTurk participants, drawing on relational benefits concepts from Gwinner, Gremler, and Bitner (1998).

Response format

7-point Likert (1=fully disagree, 7=fully agree)

Scale items

• _____ is better than other providers because they know what I want.
• _____ is superior to other providers because they know me better.
• _____ is the best provider because they are aware of my needs.

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

Usage notes & scoring

AVE was .943; composite reliability was .98, indicating very strong convergent validity. The blank in each item should be filled with the name or description of the service provider.

Citation

del Rio Olivares, M. J., Wittkowski, K., Aspara, J., Falk, T., & Mattila, P. (2018). Relational price discounts: Consumers' metacognitions and nonlinear effects of initial discounts on customer retention. Journal of Marketing, 82(1), 115–131.

Keywords