construction and validation of a consumer orientation questionnaire (SCOI) designed to measure Fromm's (1955) 'marketing character' in Australia, The

These statements comprised a combination of both values and behaviors thought to underlie the concept of Fromm's (1955) marketing orientation. While some researchers believe that it may be better to focus on behaviors rather than on values (eg, Keisler, Collins 8t Miller,1969), there is empirical evidence to support the position that the judicious operationalisation of values can establish significant associations between values and behaviors (Shama & Wisenblit, 1984). Further, some aspects of the definition of Fromm's (1955) marketing character would be rather difficult to assess by questioning respondents about their behaviors, especially considering the likely impact of social desirability.

A five point Likert type scale was constructed for each of the 65 statements on a "Not at all like me" to a "Very much like me" continuum. This preliminary instrument was then administered to the 136 undergraduate students, together with the shortened version of the Marlowe-Crowne Scale of Social Desirability (Crowne & Marlowe, 1965), designed by Strahan and Gerbasi (1972).

RESULTS

Final selection of 35 items (see Table 1) was made by using the criterion of item-total correlation (as per Nunnally, 1978, pp282-286) (p

Note also that the items chosen do not require any detailed knowledge, physical aptitude, or other potential confounds which may favor one population (such as communities characterised by self sufficiency) over another and thus should increase the generalisability of the final instrument.

The Cronbach coefficient alpha was used to assess internal consistency of the final 35 item instrument, and an alpha of .85 was obtained. The mean item/total correlation is r = .43. Note that, in the final instrument, there were no significant negative correlations between any items, and the highest positive correlation (r = .80) was between items 18 and 32. While this result is high, it is still low enough (i.e., below r = .90) to suggest that the respective items are not interchangeable.

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

The distributions of 32 of the 35 items and Total scores were normal (RyanJoiner test for normality), while items 15 (p = .048), 25 (p = .042) and 35 (p =.032) were almost normal. The mean score was 99.75, the SD 16.79, with a maximum score of 141 out of a possible 175, and a minimum of 60. Total scores on the SCOI decrease slightly with increasing age (r = -.19; p

Item Characteristics

Table 2 summarises item correlations with the total score, together with the mean and standard deviation of each of the 35 items in the final instrument. The items in this table are based on a restoring of the final 35 items from the preliminary 65 item instrument which was administered to the sample. Note that of the 35 final items, only three did not receive a full range of responses.

Reliability: A three week test-retest using 119 of the original 136 participants was used to assess reliability, with a result of _r =.935. The mean (total) score in the pilot test was 100.26, and 100.97 in the re-test (based on the same 119 participants), which did not represent a significant difference. Further, the standard deviations, quartiles, and range of scores were nearly identical in both tests (see Table 3):