Switching Cost (Information Search Burden)

What it measures

Four five-point items assess the perceived evaluation costs associated with switching service providers, specifically the time and effort required to gather, process, and compare information about alternatives. Items address time constraints, effort needed to feel comfortable evaluating alternatives, difficulty of comparison, and general toughness of evaluating other providers.

Response format

5-point mixed (items 1, 3, 4: strongly disagree/strongly agree; item 2: very little/a lot)

Scale items

• I cannot afford the time to get the information to fully evaluate other service providers.
• How much time/effort does it take to get the information you need to feel comfortable evaluating new service providers?
• Comparing the benefits of my service provider with the benefits of other service providers takes too much time/effort, even when I have the information.
• It is tough to compare the other service providers.

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

Usage notes & scoring

Alphas of .80 (long-distance) and .83 (credit cards). CFA alongside seven other switching cost scales supported unidimensionality, convergent and discriminant validities. Item 2 uses a different response format (very little / a lot) from the other three items.

Citation

Burnham, T. A., Frels, J. K., & Mahajan, V. (2003). Consumer switching costs: A typology, antecedents and consequences. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(2), 109–126.

Keywords