Measuring consumers’ preference: Development and standardization of scale

Pages: 350-355
Ruqaiya Bano (Department of Agricultural Economics and Business Management, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pardesh)
Salma Ahmad (Department of Business Administration, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pardesh)
Shah Mohd. Khan (Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pardesh)

The study was carried out to construct a valid and reliable scale for measuring consumer’s preference. It was a bilingual (English & Hindi) Consumers’ Preference scale. The responses were on a Likert type five point scale with 40 items. A sample of 780 consumers was drawn to determine the psychometric properties (validity & reliability) of the test. Subject Matter Experts (SME) rated each statement on relevance, clarity, simplicity and ambiguity. As confirmed by SME, test showed high face and content validity. Item analysis conducted and the reliability using Cronbach’s Alpha of the scale was found 0.94 and is excellent. Using a more structured method, in Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with varimax rotation eight factors emerged and labeled very cautiously. In all eight factors explained 62.54% of the total variance. Convergent validity was evaluated using different criterion and the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) by each construct exceeding the variance due to measurement error for that construct. The composite reliability was also examined. Further, inter-factorial correlations among sub-dimensions of Consumers’ Preference scale found highly significant (p<0.001).The test is valid and reliable for assessing students internally and prepare them for external examinations. It can be concluded that the present research work confirms high psychometric characteristics of Consumers' Preference scale.