High impact scales in marketing: A mathematical equation for evaluating the impact of popular scales

Abstract

Decision making in any industry is heavily dependent on the availability of right measures and the appropriate tools arriving at the right measures. Scale development, therefore, is a very critical part of understanding and building knowledge in any subject. Marketing instruments are often used in research without sufficient evidence of their reliability. Often new scales are developed for each single instance of study or application. Conflict and disagreement on the basic definition of the construct, further leads to little agreement about which pre-existing scale to use, or does a situation warrant the creation of a new scale altogether. Study of popular marketing scales, their limitations and potential research directions to overcome those is the agenda of this study. The methodology used is exploratory research based on literature and secondary data, combined with expert opinion of practitioners from the industry. We understand what constitutes a high impact scale and what factors determine whether a scale is deemed high impact by practitioners. Discriminant Analysis is applied to arrive at the same.