Attitude Toward the Low Price Claim (Self-Serving) (ATSS)

Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Low Price Claim (Self-Serving) (ATSS) scale is a psychometric measurement instrument developed by consumer psychology and marketing researchers Hillbun Dixon Ho, Shankar Ganesan, and Harmen Oppewal (2011). Grounded in attribution theory and the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), the instrument assesses the degree to which consumers attribute a retailer’s low-price promotional assertions to manipulative, opportunistic, and self-interested commercial motives rather than to an authentic desire to deliver consumer value. The ATSS scale comprises five unidimensional items evaluated via a 7-point Likert response format spanning from "Strongly Disagree" (1) to "Strongly Agree" (7). The instrument specifically captures consumer perceptions that low-price claims are executed to fabricate misleading store price impressions, dissuade external price search, and strategically exploit consumers who face severe cognitive or search-time constraints. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability estimates routinely exceeding .85, alongside exemplary convergent and discriminant validity relative to constructs such as general retailer skepticism, perceived price fairness, and pre-purchase search intention. This paper provides an exhaustive academic appraisal of the ATSS scale, delineating its conceptual architecture, theoretical foundations, psychometric indicators, factor structure, administration criteria, and empirical utility across retail management and behavioral economics.

Keywords

Attitude Toward the Low Price Claim, ATSS, price signaling, consumer skepticism, attribution theory, persuasion knowledge model, retail pricing, deceptive advertising, search costs, psychometrics

Authors

The scale was developed and validated by a team of scholars in marketing and behavioral retail economics:

• Hillbun Dixon Ho — Department of Marketing, Monash University, Australia. Dr. Ho’s research focuses on retail marketing strategy, consumer search behavior, and price perception dynamics.
• Shankar Ganesan — Department of Marketing, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, USA. Professor Ganesan is an authority on interorganizational relationships, buyer-seller interactions, customer trust, and retail pricing strategies.
• Harmen Oppewal — Department of Marketing, Monash Business School, Monash University, Australia. Professor Oppewal specializes in consumer decision-making, store choice modeling, and retail environment influences.

Purpose

Modern retail environments rely heavily on price signals—such as "Everyday Low Prices" (EDLP), "Lowest Price Guaranteed", and deep promotional discounts—to communicate market positioning and draw foot traffic. While conventional economic models assume that price signals unambiguously lower consumer search costs and communicate market competitiveness, behavioral reality reveals that consumers frequently scrutinize the latent motives underlying such promotional claims. The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Low Price Claim (Self-Serving) (ATSS) scale is to quantify the extent to which consumers generate cynical, self-serving attributions regarding a retailer’s explicit low-price claims.

Rather than presuming that low-price assertions engender universal goodwill or immediate price image enhancement, the scale measures whether consumers interpret these claims as deceptive marketing ploys. Specifically, the ATSS scale measures attributions that the firm is deploying price signaling opportunistically to:

• Establish a misleading overall low-price store image that does not correspond to actual basket prices;
• Preemptively dissuade consumers from conducting competitive price comparisons across rival retailers;
• Exploit consumers who suffer from acute time pressure, information asymmetry, or cognitive fatigue; and
• Extract economic rents by luring consumers into retail environments where high-margin ancillary items offset advertised loss-leaders.

From an applied research perspective, the ATSS scale serves as a vital diagnostic tool for retail strategists and experimental consumer researchers. It enables investigators to ascertain the boundary conditions under which promotional advertising backfires, precipitating marketplace cynicism, transactional distrust, and brand devaluation. In clinical consumer studies and behavioral policy analysis, the tool illuminates how vulnerable consumer segments respond to aggressive promotional framing, facilitating regulatory oversight of deceptive pricing practices.

Psychological Construct

The ATSS operationalizes the psychological construct of attributions of self-serving firm motives within a retail price-promotional context. Grounded in social cognitive psychology, attributions reflect the causal inferences an individual constructs to explain why an actor behaves in a specific manner. When applied to consumer behavior, motive attributions are fundamentally bifurcated into two polar orientations:

• Consumer-Serving (Pro-Social) Motives: The belief that the firm acts out of genuine benevolence, structural efficiency, or a partnership mindset designed to deliver authentic financial relief, savings, and value to its clientele.
• Self-Serving (Opportunistic) Motives: The belief that the firm acts strictly out of unilateral commercial self-interest, employing calculated disingenuousness, psychological manipulation, and strategic misdirection to bolster corporate margins at the consumer’s expense.

The ATSS scale isolates and measures the self-serving attributional dimension across several interrelated psychological facets:

1. Impression Manipulation (Calculated Image Distortion)

Consumers evaluate whether a targeted promotional price is genuine or an orchestrated illusion. In retail environments, firms often lower prices on a minuscule, highly visible subset of "signpost items" (e.g., staple groceries like milk or bread) to induce consumers into projecting an across-the-board low-price image onto the entire store inventory. The ATSS captures the consumer’s conscious realization and suspicion of this halo-inducing tactic.

2. Deterrence of External Search (Anti-Competitive Preemption)

Economic search theory demonstrates that rational actors cease searching when the perceived marginal benefit of locating a lower price is surpassed by the marginal cost of continued search. The ATSS assesses whether consumers perceive low-price claims as deliberate barriers engineered to instill a false sense of security, thereby curtailing their exploratory information-gathering across competitor establishments.

3. Exploitation of Information Asymmetry and Bounded Rationality

The construct addresses the consumer’s perception of vulnerability exploitation. Consumers recognize that modern retail environments frequently impose cognitive overload through complex pricing architectures, volatile discount cadences, and confusing promotional jargon. The ATSS quantifies the belief that retailers design their low-price claims specifically to take advantage of consumers who lack the time, computational capacity, or informational access necessary to verify claim veracity.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the ATSS scale is anchored primarily in three theoretical paradigms: Attribution Theory, the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), and Signaling Theory.

Attribution Theory and Kelley’s Covariation Model

Originating with Fritz Heider (1958) and extended by Harold Kelley (1967, 1973), attribution theory posits that social perceivers operate as "naive scientists," systematically analyzing behavioral cues to assign causal responsibility to internal (dispositional/agentic) or external (situational) factors. In commercial transactions, consumers continually determine whether a retailer’s price cut is driven by external cost efficiencies (e.g., supply chain optimization transferred to shoppers) or internal opportunistic dispositions (e.g., corporate greed, deceit). When distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus information lead consumers to infer intentional manipulation, self-serving attributions dominate, producing defensive psychological reactions.

The Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM)

Developed by Marian Friestad and Peter Wright (1994), the PKM outlines how consumers develop, refine, and deploy personal knowledge regarding the psychological tactics, goals, and strategies marketers use to influence them. When an individual encounters an explicit price claim, persuasion knowledge is activated. If consumers recognize that the price claim serves as a persuasion tactic designed to manipulate their cognitive shortcuts, a "change of meaning" occurs: the promotional claim ceases to be perceived as an objective piece of market data and is reinterpreted as an agentic ploy. The ATSS directly assesses this activated persuasion knowledge directed at pricing claims.

Signaling Theory and the Economics of Information

Formulated by Michael Spence (1973) and introduced to retail marketing by Kirmani and Rao (2000), signaling theory addresses decision-making under conditions of asymmetric information. A signal is only credible if it is incentive-compatible—meaning the cost of sending a false signal is prohibitively high for a low-quality or high-price actor. However, because price claims are readily disseminated with low marginal verification penalties, consumers often view them as "cheap talk." The ATSS operationalizes the consumer’s assessment that the retailer’s price signal lacks bona fide commitment, functioning instead as a predatory mechanism to exploit search friction.

Validity

The validity of the ATSS scale has been substantiated through rigorous experimental and empirical psychometric assessments across multiple retail contexts.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity denotes how accurately an operational measure reflects the theoretical construct it was engineered to assess. In the original empirical investigations conducted by Ho, Ganesan, and Oppewal (2011), the five items of the ATSS loaded significantly and robustly on a single latent factor, with standardized factor loadings consistently exceeding the standard .70 threshold (ranging from .72 to .88, $p < .001$). Furthermore, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for the construct surpassed the recommended benchmark of .50 (frequently exceeding .65), verifying that the variance explained by the latent construct is substantially larger than the variance attributable to random measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and examination of the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT). The square root of the AVE for the ATSS scale was substantially greater than its bivariate correlations with related constructs, including:

• Store Price Image: General cognitive evaluations of whether a store is expensive or economical;
• General Advertising Skepticism (SKEP): Generalized trait-based distrust of advertising claims;
• Perceived Retailer Benevolence: The consumer’s overarching trust in the retailer’s goodwill;
• External Price Search Intention: Behavioral plans to continue visiting alternative retail outlets prior to purchase.

Because the correlations remained well below the conservative .85 threshold, the ATSS proved itself distinct from both broad retailer skepticism and overall store price perception.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity is evident in the scale’s predictable behavior within broader theoretical networks. Ho et al. (2011) demonstrated that high ATSS scores significantly attenuate the positive influence that price signals normally exert on store price perceptions. When consumers score high on the ATSS, exposure to low-price claims fails to suppress external search; instead, it frequently increases consumer motivation to cross-shop and verify pricing among competitors. Moreover, elevated ATSS scores are associated with lower patronage intentions, reduced basket expenditure, and heightened perceptions of price unfairness.

Reliability

The ATSS scale displays high internal consistency reliability across varied empirical samples and experimental manipulations. In the developmental and validation studies executed by Ho, Ganesan, and Oppewal (2011), the scale demonstrated exemplary reliability metrics:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): Reported values consistently fall between .86 and .91 across varying experimental conditions and pricing scenarios, well above the customary .70 benchmark for research instruments.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling (SEM) estimation yielded CR values exceeding .88, demonstrating that the five items uniformly contribute to the latent measurement without uncharacteristic measurement variance.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations for each of the five items exceed .60, showing that every single item possesses strong discriminating power and functions cohesively within the unified scale.
• Standard Error of Measurement (SEM): Low standard error parameters confirm that the scale provides high precision across both the middle and upper quartiles of consumer cynicism scores.

Replication studies within retail service marketing and omnichannel pricing environments continue to document alpha coefficients exceeding .85, confirming the structural stability of the scale across diverse product categories (e.g., consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics, and apparel).

Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the ATSS scale was initially established using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and confirmed through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) within a structural equation modeling framework.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During preliminary instrument refinement, EFA using principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood estimation with oblimin rotation revealed a clean, single-factor solution. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy routinely exceeds .85, indicating excellent factorability of the correlation matrix, while Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity demonstrates statistical significance ($p < .001$). A single dominant eigenvalue exceeding 3.20 accounted for upwards of 65% to 70% of the total shared variance, with no secondary factors registering eigenvalues near the traditional Kaiser threshold of 1.0.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

CFA confirmed the unidimensional measurement model. The goodness-of-fit statistics across multiple experimental datasets yielded outstanding fit indices that met or surpassed rigorous structural equation modeling standards:

• Model Chi-Square ($\chi^2$): Nonsignificant or exhibiting a $\chi^2 / df$ ratio below 2.5.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently ranging from .96 to .99.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Values spanning from .95 to .98.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates ranging from .035 to .058, with 90% confidence intervals remaining below .08.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values remaining below .040.

Standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) across all five indicators consistently range from .72 to .88, confirming that each item serves as an effective, statistically sound indicator of the latent self-serving attribution construct.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The ATSS is a self-administered, unidimensional survey instrument designed for empirical, experimental, or field survey contexts.

• Target Respondent Population: Adult consumers (18+), retail shoppers, and laboratory participants evaluating retail advertisements, store environments, or online e-commerce platforms.
• Administration Mode: Computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI), paper-and-pencil surveys, or mobile questionnaires.
• Completion Time: Approximately 1.5 to 3 minutes.
• Item Count: 5 items.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type scale formatted as follows:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
  • 5 = Somewhat Agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Procedure:
  • All 5 items are positively valenced toward the self-serving attribution construct (no reverse-scored items).
  • An overall score is calculated either as an unweighted composite mean (summing all 5 items and dividing by 5, resulting in a continuous score from 1.0 to 7.0) or as a total summation score (ranging from 5 to 35).
  • Higher scores reflect stronger attributions of opportunistic, manipulative, and deceptive motives behind the retailer’s price claim.
  • Scores from 1.0 to 3.0 denote low self-serving attributions (consumer trust in the price signal); scores from 3.1 to 4.9 denote moderate or ambivalent attributions; scores from 5.0 to 7.0 represent acute promotional skepticism and cynicism.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitude Toward the Low Price Claim (Self-Serving) scale was introduced in 2011 in the Journal of Retailing:

• Publication Year: 2011.
• Copyright Holder: Elsevier Inc. / New York University (on behalf of the Journal of Retailing).
• Commercial Usage & Licensing: For commercial consulting, proprietary marketing audits, or integration into fee-based consumer insight platforms, permissions must be obtained through Elsevier via the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) or RightsLink.
• Academic Research Usage: Under academic fair dealing and standard scientific research practices, academic scholars may employ the instrument for non-commercial educational and empirical investigations, provided appropriate scholarly attribution and bibliographic citation are granted to Ho, Ganesan, and Oppewal (2011).

References

• Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380
• Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• Ho, H. D., Ganesan, S., & Oppewal, H. (2011). The impact of store-price signals on consumer search and store evaluation. Journal of Retailing, 87(2), 127–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2011.02.004
• Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192–238). University of Nebraska Press.
• Kelley, H. H. (1973). The processes of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28(2), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034225
• Kirmani, A., & Rao, A. R. (2000). No pain, no gain: A critical review of the literature on signaling unobservable product quality. Journal of Marketing, 64(2), 66–79. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.64.2.66.18000
• Obermiller, C., & Spangenberg, E. R. (1998). Development of a scale to measure skepticism toward advertising. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 7(2), 159–186. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp0702_03
• Spence, M. (1973). Job market signaling. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355–374. https://doi.org/10.2307/1882010
• Stigler, G. J. (1961). The economics of information. Journal of Political Economy, 69(3), 213–225. https://doi.org/10.1086/258464

Items of the Scale