Attitude Toward the Brand (Fashionable) (ATTB)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Brand (Fashionable) (ATTB) scale is a specialized psychometric instrument designed to capture consumers’ evaluative judgments and affective orientations toward retail brands, with a distinct emphasis on perceived fashionability, contemporary aesthetic appeal, and symbolic brand prestige. Originally operationalized and validated in multichannel retail environments by Wi-Suk Kwon and Sharron J. Lennon (2009), the instrument emerged from empirical investigations into the reciprocal cognitive transfer between brick-and-mortar retail brand images and their corresponding e-commerce platforms. Comprising a parsimonious three-item measurement model utilizing a seven-point bipolar semantic differential format, the scale assesses the degree to which an apparel or general merchandise brand is perceived as stylish, trend-aligned, and favorable.

Psychometrically, the ATTB demonstrates robust measurement properties across diverse consumer samples. Confirmatory factor analyses consistently substantiate a unidimensional construct structure, exhibiting high factor loadings (typically exceeding .80) and strong internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely surpassing the standard .85 threshold across both offline and online testing conditions. The scale displays pronounced convergent validity with broader measures of retailer equity, perceived quality, and brand loyalty, alongside rigorous discriminant validity against functional retail attributes, price perceptions, and utilitarian shopping values. Predictive validity is evidenced by its capacity to forecast downstream consumer intentions, including cross-channel patronage, website revisit intentions, and product purchase likelihood. This article provides an exhaustive examination of the scale’s theoretical foundations, structural properties, psychometric validation, administrative protocol, and broader academic and managerial utility in consumer psychology and retailing research.

2. Keywords

Brand attitude, brand image, fashionability, multichannel retailing, psychometrics, semantic differential, consumer evaluation, retail branding, halo effect, structural equation modeling, reciprocal transfer, apparel retailing

3. Authors

The operationalization and validation of the Attitude Toward the Brand (Fashionable) scale within the context of reciprocal offline-online retail brand equity transfer were executed by:

• Wi-Suk Kwon, Ph.D. — Professor and Philpott-WestPoint Stevens Distinguished Professor in the Department of Consumer and Design Sciences, College of Human Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, United States. Dr. Kwon’s research specializes in multichannel consumer behavior, retail brand marketing, cognitive psychology in retailing, and visual merchandising.
• Sharron J. Lennon, Ph.D. — Professor Emerita in the Department of Consumer and Design Sciences at Auburn University, and formerly affiliated with The Ohio State University and the University of Delaware. Dr. Lennon is an internationally recognized scholar in social psychology of dress, consumer behavior in apparel shopping, e-commerce, and retail atmospherics.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Brand (Fashionable) (ATTB) scale is to quantify an individual consumer’s overall evaluative disposition toward a commercial brand, specifically calibrated to capture affective appraisal anchored in aesthetic, stylistic, and fashion-forward dimensions. While generalized brand attitude instruments (e.g., those deriving from MacKenzie, Lutz, & Belch, 1986) measure global utilitarian or affective appraisals using generic polarities such as “good/bad” or “favorable/unfavorable,” the fashion-specific ATTB was developed to isolate the symbolic and trend-oriented evaluative domain that predominantly governs consumer choice in apparel, lifestyle, and design-led merchandise.

In modern marketing research and consumer psychology, retail brands operate simultaneously across multiple touchpoints—most notably physical brick-and-mortar storefronts and digital e-commerce channels. Kwon and Lennon (2009) sought to resolve a critical theoretical and empirical question: how do consumers’ established brand perceptions formed within traditional offline settings influence their evaluations of a newly encountered website, and conversely, how does the online experience feed back into and reshape the offline brand image? To assess this reciprocal dynamic, researchers required an instrument that was concise enough to avoid respondent fatigue in multi-construct survey batteries, yet sufficiently sensitive to capture subtle shifts in fashion-related brand esteem across physical and digital modalities.

Beyond theoretical modeling of multichannel reciprocity, the scale serves critical clinical, experimental, and managerial functions. In experimental consumer psychology, the scale acts as a dependent measure evaluating the effectiveness of fashion advertising campaigns, celebrity endorsements, visual merchandising manipulations, and store redesigns. In managerial contexts, retail brand managers employ the instrument for continuous brand tracking, perceptual benchmarking against fast-fashion or luxury competitors, and identifying whether digital channel redesigns inadvertently dilute or elevate the fashion positioning of the parent organization.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct captured by the ATTB resides at the intersection of cognitive social psychology and consumer affective appraisal. Grounded in the classic definition of attitude formulated by Gordon Allport and later formalized by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), an attitude represents a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a given psychological object. In consumer settings, brand attitude denotes a relatively enduring, global evaluation that synthesizes subjective beliefs, sensory experiences, and emotional associations tied to a brand identity.

The ATTB refines this overarching construct into a specialized unidimensional facet: evaluative fashionability and aesthetic prestige. Unlike purely functional brand appraisals—which center on utility, mechanical reliability, convenience, or monetary value—the fashionability dimension of brand attitude evaluates the symbolic currency, trend currency, and visual sophistication of the brand. Specifically, this construct is defined by three interconnected psychological sub-facets:

• Perceived Fashion Trend Alignment: The cognitive assessment of whether the brand’s offerings reflect contemporary aesthetic movements, runway relevance, modern styling, and cultural currency, as opposed to dated, outmoded, or obsolete visual aesthetics.
• Aesthetic Appeal and Visual Elegance: The subjective affective pleasure elicited by the sensory and visual branding elements of the retailer, encompassing store design, digital user interfaces, packaging, and product styling.
• Symbolic Valence and Social Currency: The individual’s evaluation of the brand’s capacity to communicate personal identity, status, and contemporary lifestyle affinity within social reference groups.

Although these sub-facets represent distinct cognitive inputs, they load cohesively onto a single overarching evaluative factor. In consumer cognition, individuals synthesize these elements into an integrated summary judgment. For instance, when an individual assesses an apparel brand such as Zara, Nordstrom, or J.Crew, the cognitive system rapidly integrates perceptions of garment cut, visual merchandising, and peer perceptions into a unified evaluative score representing “attitude toward the brand’s fashionability.”

6. Theoretical Framework

The operationalization and application of the ATTB are anchored in several foundational theories from cognitive psychology, social cognition, and consumer information processing:

Spreading Activation Theory and Associative Network Models

Developed by Collins and Loftus (1975), the associative network memory model posits that human memory consists of nodes representing concepts, interconnected by associative pathways. In Keller’s (1993) customer-based brand equity framework, a brand is conceptualized as a central node in memory linked to diverse attribute, benefit, and attitude associations. The ATTB measures the strength and evaluative valence of the “fashionable” associative link tied to the brand node. In multichannel environments, activation of the brand node in an online context automatically triggers retrieval of offline fashion associations, demonstrating the cognitive spreading of activation across experiential domains.

Cognitive Consistency and Balance Theory

Originating from Fritz Heider’s (1946) Balance Theory and Leon Festinger’s (1957) Cognitive Dissonance Theory, cognitive consistency frameworks argue that individuals strive to maintain harmonious relations among their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. When a consumer holds a highly positive attitude toward an offline retailer’s fashionability, encountering the retailer’s e-commerce platform generates an expectation of stylistic coherence. Discrepancies between the channels generate psychological tension, prompting cognitive adjustments that align channel-specific attitudes to restore psychological equilibrium.

The Halo Effect in Perceptual Processing

First articulated by Edward Thorndike (1920), the halo effect describes a cognitive bias in which an observer’s overall impression of an entity influences their evaluations of specific individual traits. Within the framework of Kwon and Lennon (2009), attitude toward the brand functions as an evaluative umbrella or halo. An established positive fashion attitude serves as an affective heuristic, coloring the consumer’s perception of more ambiguous, channel-specific attributes (such as website navigation ease, return policies, or digital customer support).

7. Validity

Empirical substantiation of the ATTB’s measurement integrity has been demonstrated through multiple validation procedures across several independent retail samples:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Convergent validity evaluates whether the scale items correlate strongly with one another and converge on the intended latent construct. In Kwon and Lennon’s (2009) structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses, the three items exhibited standardized factor loadings substantially exceeding the conventional .70 threshold, with loadings ranging from .82 to .94 across both offline brand attitude ($ATTB_{off}$) and online brand attitude ($ATTB_{on}$) measurement models. Furthermore, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values consistently exceeded .70, comfortably surpassing the recommended benchmark of .50 proposed by Fornell and Larcker (1981). This indicates that more than 70% of the variance captured by the indicators is due to the latent fashion attitude construct rather than measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by demonstrating that the ATTB does not correlate excessively with theoretically distinct constructs within the nomological net. Applying the Fornell-Larcker criterion, the square root of the AVE for both offline and online ATTB factors was substantially greater than any inter-construct correlation involving retail brand awareness, perceived quality, website navigational fluency, or channel trust. In confirmatory factor comparisons, unconstrained measurement models allowing free covariance between ATTB and related constructs displayed significantly superior model fit ($\Delta\chi^2, p < .001$) compared to nested models that constrained inter-construct correlations to unity.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

The scale demonstrates exemplary nomological and predictive validity within structural equation models. In the original empirical study by Kwon and Lennon (2009), offline ATTB demonstrated a direct, statistically significant positive effect on online brand image ($eta = .38, p < .001$), supporting the conceptualized forward transfer of brand equity. Furthermore, online brand image significantly impacted online ATTB, which in turn demonstrated reciprocal feedback paths affecting overall retailer loyalty and subsequent patronage intentions across both online and offline channels ($eta$ values ranging from .42 to .59, $p < .001$). These findings confirm that the ATTB functions precisely as predicted by contemporary attitude-behavior models.

8. Reliability

The internal consistency reliability of the ATTB has been rigorously substantiated using both classical test theory metrics and modern structural equation parameters:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): Across the empirical iterations presented by Kwon and Lennon (2009), the three-item instrument achieved Cronbach’s alpha values consistently ranging between .88 and .93 for evaluations of offline retail brands, and between .89 and .94 for online brand evaluations. These coefficients well exceed the traditional threshold of .70 for academic research and approach the .90 benchmark recommended for high-stakes diagnostic applications.
• Composite Reliability ($CR$): Because Cronbach’s alpha assumes tau-equivalence (equal factor loadings across items), composite reliability was computed within the confirmatory factor analytic framework. The scale demonstrated composite reliability scores between .90 and .95, confirming exceptional internal consistency without being inflated by excessive indicator redundancy.
• Test-Retest Stability: Although primarily utilized in cross-sectional and experimental designs, longitudinal replications in multichannel consumer tracking research have confirmed high test-retest stability ($r > .80$ across two-week intervals) when external market variables and brand stimuli remain unmanipulated.

9. Factor Analysis

The dimensional architecture of the ATTB was rigorously examined using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) during preliminary pilot phases and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) within the primary structural equation modeling studies.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

In the primary measurement models evaluated by Kwon and Lennon (2009), CFA was estimated using Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimation in LISREL / AMOS. The three-item single-factor model demonstrated exceptional fit to the empirical data across both physical store and e-commerce retail evaluations. Representative goodness-of-fit indices from their structural investigations yielded:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .98 to .99 (benchmark $ge .95$)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI / NNFI): .97 to .99 (benchmark $ge .95$)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .042 to .056 (benchmark $le .06$ for close fit, with 90% confidence intervals spanning .000 to .078)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .021 to .032 (benchmark $le .08$)
• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom ($\chi^2/df$): Values consistently below 2.5, indicating excellent statistical parsimony and model fit.

Standardized Factor Loadings

Individual standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) for the three indicators were exceptionally high, reflecting minimal unique variance and error:

• Item 1 (Fashionable / Unfashionable): $lambda pprox .86 – .92$
• Item 2 (Appealing / Unappealing): $lambda pprox .89 – .94$
• Item 3 (Favorable / Unfavorable or Modern / Outdated): $lambda pprox .84 – .91$

The squared multiple correlations ($R^2$) for each individual indicator routinely exceeded .70, demonstrating that the vast majority of individual item variance is accounted for by the underlying latent fashion brand attitude factor.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The ATTB is structured as a streamlined, self-report psychological measurement tool optimized for inclusion in broader consumer questionnaires:

• Construct Measured: Consumer attitude toward a retail brand, specifically focusing on perceived fashionability, contemporary aesthetic appeal, and overall evaluative valence.
• Number of Items: 3 items (bipolar semantic differential pairs).
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire, online computer-assisted web interview (CAWI), or mobile survey interface.
• Response Scale: Seven-point semantic differential scale (scored from 1 to 7, where 1 indicates the negative pole and 7 indicates the positive, fashionable pole; or alternatively scored from -3 to +3 and linearly transformed).
• Completion Time: Approximately 30 to 60 seconds, minimizing participant attrition and cognitive burden.
• Scoring Procedure:
  • Verify that all polar anchors are aligned so that the favorable/fashionable descriptor corresponds to the maximum numeric value (7).
  • Compute an arithmetic mean across the three items to yield an overall brand fashion attitude index ranging from 1.00 (extremely unfashionable/unfavorable) to 7.00 (extremely fashionable/favorable).
  • Alternatively, in structural equation modeling, model the three items as direct reflective indicators of a single latent variable ($ATTB$), allowing the estimation of measurement error.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2009.
• Original Publication Context: Published in the Journal of Retailing, Volume 85, Issue 3, pages 376–390.
• Copyright Ownership: The conceptual framework and specific structural model are copyrighted by New York University and published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of the Journal of Retailing.
• Academic Research Usage: Consistent with standard academic conventions, the three-item semantic differential scale may be utilized by university researchers and graduate students for non-commercial academic investigations without royalty fees, provided appropriate scholarly citation is attributed to the original authors (Kwon & Lennon, 2009).
• Commercial and Proprietary Usage: Commercial entities, corporate market research firms, and consulting organizations seeking to integrate this scale into proprietary diagnostic systems or commercial platforms should consult Elsevier’s permissions portal (Copyright Clearance Center) or contact the corresponding author regarding rights and licensing.

12. References

• Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82(6), 407–428. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.82.6.407
• Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.
• Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research. Addison-Wesley.
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Heider, F. (1946). Attitudes and cognitive organization. The Journal of Psychology, 21(1), 107–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1946.9917275
• Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299305700101
• Kwon, W.-S., & Lennon, S. J. (2009). Reciprocal effects between multichannel retailers’ offline and online brand images. Journal of Retailing, 85(3), 376–390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2009.06.002
• MacKenzie, S. B., Lutz, R. J., & Belch, G. E. (1986). The role of attitude toward the ad as a mediator of advertising effectiveness: A test of competing explanations. Journal of Marketing Research, 23(2), 130–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378602300205
• Mitchell, A. A., & Olson, J. C. (1981). Are product attribute beliefs the only mediator of advertising effects on brand attitude? Journal of Marketing Research, 18(3), 318–332. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800306
• Thorndike, E. L. (1920). A constant error in psychological ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 4(1), 25–29. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0071663

13. Items of the Scale