Types of ScalesFrequently used ScalesSelf Rating Scales |
Four types of scales are generally used for Marketing Research.
Nominal Scale
This is a very simple scale. It consists of assignment of facts/choices to various alternative categories which are usually exhaustive as well mutually exclusive. Examples of Nominal Scale are - credit card numbers, bank account numbers, employee id numbers etc. It is simple and widely used when relationship between two variables is to be studied. In a Nominal Scale numbers are no more than labels and are used specifically to identify different categories of responses. Example:
What is your gender?
[ ] Male
[ ] FemaleAnother example is - a survey of retail stores done on two dimensions - way of maintaining stocks and daily turnover.
How do you stock items at present?
[ ] By product category
[ ] At a centralized store
[ ] Department wise
[ ] Single warehouseDaily turnover of consumer is?
[ ] Between 100 – 200
[ ] Between 200 – 300
[ ] Above 300A two way classification can be made as follows
Daily/Stock Turnover Method Product Category Department wise Centralized Store Single Warehouse 100 – 200 200 – 300 Above 300 Mode is frequently used for response category.
Ordinal Scale
Ordinal scales are the simplest attitude measuring scale. It is more powerful than a nominal scale in that the numbers possess the property of rank order. The ranking of certain product attributes/benefits as deemed important by the respondents is obtained through the scale.
Example 1: Rank the following attributes (1 - 5), on their importance in a microwave oven.
- Company Name
- Functions
- Price
- Comfort
- Design
The most important attribute is ranked 1 by the respondents and the least important is ranked 5. Instead of numbers, letters or symbols too can be used to rate in a ordinal scale. Such scale makes no attempt to measure the degree of favourability of different rankings.
Example 2 - If there are 4 different types of fertilizers and if they are ordered on the basis of quality as Grade A, Grade B, Grade C, Grade D is again an Ordinal Scale.
Example 3 - If there are 5 different brands of Talcom Powder and if a respondent ranks them based on say, “Freshness” into Rank 1 having maximum Freshness Rank 2 the second maximum Freshness, and so on, an Ordinal Scale results.
Median and mode are meaningful for ordinal scale.
Interval Scale
Herein the distance between the various categories unlike in Nominal, or numbers unlike in Ordinal, are equal in case of Interval Scales. The Interval Scales are also termed as Rating Scales. An Interval Scale has an arbitrary Zero point with further numbers placed at equal intervals. A very good example of Interval Scale is a Thermometer.
Illustration 1 - How do you rate your present refrigerator for the following qualities.
Company Name Less Known 1 2 3 4 5 Well Known Functions Few 1 2 3 4 5 Many Price Low 1 2 3 4 5 High Design Poor 1 2 3 4 5 Good Overall Satisfaction Very Dis-Satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 Very Satisfied Such a scale permits the researcher to say that position 5 on the scale is above position 4 and also the distance from 5 to 4 is same as distance from 4 to 3. Such a scale however does not permit conclusion that position 4 is twice as strong as position 2 because no zero position has been established. The data obtained from the Interval Scale can be used to calculate the Mean scores of each attributes over all respondents. The Standard Deviation (a measure of dispersion) can also be calculated.
Ratio Scale
Ratio Scales are not widely used in Marketing Research unless a base item is made available for comparison. In the above example of Interval scale, a score of 4 in one quality does not necessarily mean that the respondent is twice more satisfied than the respondent who marks 2 on the scale. A Ratio scale has a natural zero point and further numbers are placed at equally appearing intervals. For example scales for measuring physical quantities like - length, weight, etc.
The ratio scales are very common in physical scenarios. Quantified responses forming a ratio scale analytically are the most versatile. Rati scale possess all he characteristics of an internal scale, and the ratios of the numbers on these scales have meaningful interpretations. Data on certain demographic or descriptive attributes, if they are obtained through open-ended questions, will have ratio-scale properties. Consider the following questions :
Q 1) What is your annual income before taxes? ______ $
Q 2) How far is the Theater from your home ? ______ milesAnswers to these questions have a natural, unambiguous starting point, namely zero. Since starting point is not chosen arbitrarily, computing and interpreting ratio makes sense. For example we can say that a respondent with an annual income of $ 40,000 earns twice as much as one with an annual income of $ 20,000.
Self rating scales
Graphic Rating Scale
The respondents rate the objects by placing a mark at the appropriate position on a line that runs from one extreme of the criterion variable to another. Example
0
(poor quality)1
(bad quality)5
(neither good nor bad)7
(good quality)BRAND 1
This is also known as continuous rating scale. The customer can occupy any position. Here one attribute is taken ex-quality of any brand of icecream.
poor good BRAND 2
This line can be vertical or horizontal and scale points may be provided. No other indication is there on the continuous scale. A range is provided. To quantify the responses to question that “indicate your overall opinion about ice-ream Brand 2 by placing a tick mark at appropriate position on the line”, we measure the physical distance between the left extreme position and the response position on the line.; the greater the distance, the more favourable is the response or attitude towards the brand.
Its limitation is that coding and analysis will require substantial amount of time, since we first have to measure the physical distances on the scale for each respondent.
Itemized Rating Scales
These scales are different from continuous rating scales. They have a number of brief descriptions associated with each category. They are widely used in Marketing Research. They essentially take the form of the multiple category questions. The most common are - Likert, Sementic, Staple and Multiple Dimension. Others are - Thurston and Guttman.
Likert Scale
It was developed Rensis Likert. Here the respondents are asked to indicate a degree of agreement and disagreement with each of a series of statement. Each scale item has 5 response categories ranging from strongly agree and strongly disagree.
5
Strongly agree4
Agree3
Indifferent2
Disagree1
Strongly disagreeEach statement is assigned a numerical score ranging from 1 to 5. It can also be scaled as -2 to +2.
-2 -1 0 1 2 For example quality of Mother Diary ice-cream is poor then Not Good is a negative statement and Strongly Agree with this means the quality is not good.
Each degree of agreement is given a numerical score and the respondents total score is computed by summing these scores. This total score of respondent reveals the particular opinion of a person.
Likert Scale are of ordinal type, they enable one to rank attitudes, but not to measure the difference between attitudes. They take about the same amount of efforts to create as Thurston scale and are considered more discriminating and reliable because of the larger range of responses typically given in Likert scale.
A typical Likert scale has 20 - 30 statements. While designing a good Likert Scale, first a large pool of statements relevant to the measurement of attitude has to be generated and then from the pool statements, the statements which are vague and non-discriminating have to be eliminated.
Thus, likert scale is a five point scale ranging from ’strongly agreement’to ’strongly disagreement’. No judging gap is involved in this method.
