Audience Intention Cue (Communal vs. Exchange) (AICE)

Abstract

The Audience Intention Cue (Communal vs. Exchange) (AICE) scale is a psychometric measurement instrument developed by Colleen M. Harmeling, Martin Mende, Maura L. Scott, and Robert W. Palmatier (2021) to capture social perceptions of collective motivation within brand communities and consumption audiences. Grounded in interpersonal relationship theory—specifically the foundational distinction between communal and exchange relationships—the scale evaluates whether observers perceive an audience or community’s behaviors as motivated by genuine, other-serving benevolence or by transactional, self-interested calculations. The instrument comprises six bipolar semantic differential items scored along a 7-point continuum. Higher aggregated scores reflect an attribution of communal orientation (characterized by altruism, care, relational solidarity, and helpfulness), whereas lower scores indicate an exchange orientation (characterized by self-serving, calculative, transactional, and potentially exploitative intent). Originally validated in the context of stigmatized consumer populations navigating identity threats within commercial and peer-to-peer environments, the AICE scale exhibits robust psychometric integrity. Validation studies demonstrate unidimensional factor structure, high internal consistency reliability (typically yielding Cronbach’s α coefficients exceeding .90 and composite reliability exceeding .92), convergent validity with measures of perceived community warmth and social support, and discriminant validity against generalized brand evaluation and competence metrics. The scale provides researchers in social psychology, consumer behavior, services marketing, and organizational studies with an empirical method for assessing the social attribution cues that dictate relational trust, consumer defensiveness, and community engagement.

Keywords

Audience Intention Cue, Communal vs Exchange Relationships, Social Perception, Consumer Stigma, Semantic Differential Scale, Relational Motives, Psychometrics, Attribution Theory, Brand Community, Colleen M Harmeling

Authors

The scale was developed and validated by a team of marketing and consumer psychology researchers:

• Colleen M. Harmeling, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of Marketing and Dr. Persis E. Rockwood Associate Professor of Marketing, College of Business, Florida State University. Her research focuses on relationship marketing, transformational consumer research, brand communities, and stigmatization.
• Martin Mende, Ph.D. – Professor of Marketing and Jim Moran Professor of Business Administration, College of Business, Florida State University. His research investigates relationship marketing, service systems, consumer well-being, and health-related consumption decisions.
• Maura L. Scott, Ph.D. – Professor of Marketing and Dr. Persis E. Rockwood Professor of Marketing, College of Business, Florida State University. Her scholarship centers on consumer vulnerability, healthcare marketing, services management, and public policy.
• Robert W. Palmatier, Ph.D. – Professor of Marketing and John C. Narver Chair in Business Administration, Foster School of Business, University of Washington. His research specializes in relationship marketing, marketing strategy, customer loyalty, and channel dynamics.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Audience Intention Cue (Communal vs. Exchange) (AICE) scale is to quantify an observer’s psychological inferences regarding the underlying social motivations of a group or audience. In interpersonal and consumption contexts, individuals continually decode the social environment to infer why others behave as they do. When interacting with an audience—such as a brand community, social network, peer group, or organized gathering—individuals process verbal and non-verbal cues to assess whether the members are acting in their own self-interest or demonstrating genuine regard for the welfare of others.

Harmeling et al. (2021) introduced this measure to address social and relational dynamics in contexts where consumers experience social stigma or vulnerability. Stigmatized individuals often operate with heightened vigilance toward their social surroundings. When entering commercial or service settings where their identity may be marginalized, devalued, or subjected to scrutiny, these consumers actively scan the audience for social intention cues. An audience perceived as exchange-oriented (calculative, transactional, self-interested) triggers social threat, feelings of vulnerability, and psychological defensiveness. Conversely, an audience perceived as communal (other-serving, benevolent, caring) provides an atmosphere of psychological safety, mitigating identity threat and fostering engagement, trust, and co-creation.

Beyond the domain of stigmatized consumption, the AICE scale serves essential research and managerial purposes across several disciplines:

• Brand Community Research: Investigating whether member-to-member interactions within online forums, gaming communities, or platform ecosystems are perceived as transactional hubs or authentic support networks.
• Service Systems and Healthcare: Evaluating how prospective patients or vulnerable clients perceive support groups, clinical waiting environments, or group therapy cohorts.
• Social Media and Influencer Dynamics: Assessing whether audience reactions to sponsored content, activism campaigns, or corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are perceived as exploitative or authentic.
• Organizational Psychology: Measuring internal workplace team climate to determine whether employees perceive departmental cohorts as self-serving competitors versus mutually supportive colleagues.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the AICE scale is the perceived audience intention along the communal-versus-exchange continuum. This construct reflects a cognitive attribution made by an observer regarding the normative social rules and motivational forces governing a collective entity.

The Communal Orientation Anchor

The communal pole of the construct represents perceptions of benevolent, altruistic, and welfare-oriented motivation. In a communal system, members provide benefits to others out of concern for the other party’s well-being, without maintaining an active ledger of debts or expecting immediate reciprocity. When an audience is perceived as communally oriented, observers infer that members genuinely care, value interpersonal bonds for their intrinsic worth, and are ready to provide assistance without seeking strategic advantage. In the AICE scale, this pole is captured by semantic endpoints such as Other-serving, Benevolent, Helpful, Relational, Altruistic, and Caring.

The Exchange Orientation Anchor

The exchange pole represents perceptions of transactional, self-interested, and calculative motivation. In an exchange framework, benefits are provided strictly with the expectation of receiving a comparable benefit in return, or to fulfill contractual or instrumental obligations. When an audience is perceived as exchange-oriented, observers infer that social interactions are driven by utility maximization, personal gain, or commercial calculation. At extreme levels, this perception can shade into feeling exploited, where group members appear to extract value from others rather than offering support. In the AICE scale, this pole is represented by anchors such as Self-serving, Self-interested, Exploitative, Transactional, Self-centered, and Calculative.

Unidimensional Continuum Structure

Rather than conceptualizing communal and exchange orientations as independent, orthogonal traits within the specific context of social intention cues, the AICE operationalizes them as polar opposites of a single semantic continuum. Observers appraise a situation and make an integrated inference about the prevailing social norms of the group. An audience cannot be simultaneously perceived as primarily calculative/exploitative and genuinely caring/altruistic in the same communicative interaction; hence, the bipolar semantic differential structure forces a resolved cognitive judgment.

Theoretical Framework

The AICE scale integrates three major bodies of theoretical literature: relationship norms theory, attribution theory, and social stigma and identity threat theories.

Communal and Exchange Relationship Theory

The foundational bedrock of the AICE scale is the distinction between communal and exchange relationships formulated by Margaret S. Clark and Judson Mills (1979, 1993). Clark and Mills posited that social interactions are organized around fundamentally different sets of implicit rules:

• Exchange Relationships: Governed by equity, immediate accounting of benefits, and reciprocity. Members expect to receive commensurate returns for benefits given and feel uncomfortable when the ledger remains unbalanced.
• Communal Relationships: Governed by responsiveness to mutual needs. Benefits are bestowed to support the recipient’s welfare, without contingency on future repayment. Tracking debts is viewed as inappropriate and antithetical to the bond.

Subsequent consumer research expanded this interpersonal framework to consumer-brand interactions (e.g., Aggarwal, 2004). Harmeling et al. (2021) extended this logic from dyadic relationships (brand-to-consumer) to collective audiences (audience-to-consumer), proposing that consumers evaluate the normative atmosphere of brand audiences using these same cognitive schemas.

Attribution Theory

According to attribution theory (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967), human beings act as intuitive psychologists seeking to understand the causes behind observed actions. When exposed to an audience’s verbal comments, nonverbal behaviors, or communal rituals, individuals infer underlying dispositions and intentions. The AICE captures the outcome of this attribution process: whether the perceived intentions reflect intrinsic pro-sociality (benevolence) or extrinsic instrumentality (commercial or personal gain).

Stigma and Identity Threat

The scale’s primary empirical application is grounded in theories of social stigma (Goffman, 1963; Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998). Stigmatized individuals (e.g., consumers facing health conditions, weight stigma, or socio-demographic marginalization) anticipate discrimination or devaluation. When observing an audience, attributional cues indicating an exchange orientation exacerbate threat, leading consumers to fear exploitation or exposure. Conversely, communal intention cues signal an inclusive, safe environment that decouples participation from performance or social risk.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the AICE scale was established through rigorous multi-study testing by Harmeling et al. (2021), incorporating laboratory experiments, field studies, and online consumer panels across stigmatized consumption domains (e.g., weight-loss clinics, medical fitness programs).

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by strong, statistically significant associations between the AICE scale and theoretically aligned constructs:

• Perceived Social Support: AICE scores correlate positively and strongly with validated measures of perceived emotional and informational social support within brand communities (r values typically ranging from .65 to .78, p < .001).
• Brand and Community Warmth: In line with the Stereotype Content Model (Fiske et al., 2002), perceptions of communal intent strongly predict perceived community warmth (r > .70), confirming that communal audience attributions are intimately tied to interpersonal friendliness, sincerity, and trustworthiness.
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): In confirmatory factor analyses, the AVE for the AICE scale consistently exceeds the recommended threshold of .50 (frequently surpassing .65), indicating that the latent construct accounts for more than half of the variance in its observed indicators.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established against several related but theoretically distinct constructs using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio analysis:

• Perceived Competence: While AICE correlates with social warmth, its association with community or brand competence (e.g., skill, capability, technical efficacy) is substantially lower (r between .25 and .38), demonstrating that observers clearly separate motivational intent from task ability.
• Generalized Brand Attitude: The AICE scale diverges from omnibus brand evaluations (e.g., overall favorability, liking), confirming that specific audience intention attributions operate distinctly from overall commercial brand sentiment.
• HTMT Ratios: All HTMT ratios between the AICE scale and neighboring relational constructs (such as brand attachment, perceived brand authenticity, and commercial persuasion intent) fall comfortably below the conservative .85 threshold.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Harmeling et al. (2021) demonstrated that the AICE scale functions as an essential psychological mediator in consumption environments. Specifically:

• High communal audience scores significantly reduce consumer defensiveness and identity threat among stigmatized participants (β = -.42, p < .01).
• A communal audience attribution drives increased willingness to engage in co-creation, heightened program retention, and greater word-of-mouth advocacy.
• When manipulated experimentally via community onboarding scripts, the AICE scale successfully captured the intended manipulation checks across conditions (F-statistics demonstrating large effect sizes, partial η² > .20).

Reliability

The AICE scale demonstrates exceptional reliability across experimental and survey methodologies. Empirical evaluations across diverse consumer cohorts reveal the following internal consistency metrics:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Across the empirical studies reported by Harmeling et al. (2021), the scale’s internal consistency coefficients consistently ranged from .91 to .96, well above the conventional benchmark of .70 or .80 for basic and applied research.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling confirms composite reliability values routinely exceeding .93, indicating minimal random measurement error among the six indicators.
• McDonald’s Omega (ω): When evaluated under congeneric measurement models, McDonald’s omega coefficients mirror the alpha levels (ω > .92), verifying that high internal consistency is sustained without relying on tau-equivalence assumptions.
• Test-Retest Stability: While designed primarily as a state-like perceptual cue measure responsive to situational variations, longitudinal panels assessing stable brand community audiences exhibit robust two-week test-retest correlations (r > .80), indicating that enduring community norms produce stable perceptual scores over time.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the six-item AICE scale has been thoroughly confirmed using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis

When subjecting the six semantic differential items to principal axis factoring or maximum likelihood extraction with oblique or orthogonal rotations, EFA consistently yields a single-factor solution based on Kaiser’s criterion (eigenvalue > 1.0) and scree plot examination. The primary eigenvalue typically accounts for 68% to 76% of the total item variance. No secondary factor achieves an eigenvalue above 0.60, confirming the unidimensional nature of the communal versus exchange spectrum.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Model Fit

CFA specifications evaluating a one-factor congeneric measurement model demonstrate excellent fit indices across diverse experimental samples. Typical fit parameters reported in empirical investigations include:

• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom: χ²/df < 2.50 (χ²(9) = 18.42, p > .02)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .98 to .99 (surpassing the .95 cutoff for exceptional fit)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .97 to .99
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .042 to .058 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded below .08)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .018 to .032

Standardized Factor Loadings

All six items exhibit standardized factor loadings exceeding the conventional .70 threshold, with the majority loading between .82 and .93:

• Self-serving / Other-serving: λ ≈ .84
• Self-interested / Benevolent: λ ≈ .88
• Exploitative / Helpful: λ ≈ .82
• Transactional / Relational: λ ≈ .85
• Self-centered / Altruistic: λ ≈ .91
• Calculative / Caring: λ ≈ .89

Residual covariances between item pairs are uniformly low, confirming the absence of unmodeled multidimensionality or substantial local dependency.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The AICE scale is structured as follows:

• Psychometric Classification: Self-administered psychological assessment; observer-report semantic differential scale.
• Target Population: General consumer samples, community members, patients, employees, or experimental participants evaluating social groups.
• Number of Items: 6 bipolar items.
• Response Format: 7-point semantic differential scale (ranging from 1 to 7).
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes.
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Each item is anchored by an exchange-oriented descriptor on the left (scored as 1) and a communal-oriented descriptor on the right (scored as 7).
  • An overall AICE score is calculated by computing the mean of all six items:
    AICE Score = (∑ Item_1 to Item_6) / 6
  • Possible scores range from 1.00 to 7.00.
  • Higher scores (e.g., > 5.0) indicate a strong communal perception (benevolent, other-serving, caring).
  • Lower scores (e.g., < 3.0) indicate an exchange perception (calculative, transactional, self-serving).
  • Intermediate scores around 4.0 represent a neutral, ambivalent, or balanced perception.
  • No reverse scoring is needed when items are formatted with exchange anchors at 1 and communal anchors at 7.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Audience Intention Cue (Communal vs. Exchange) scale was published in 2021 in the Journal of Marketing Research. The instrument was developed by Colleen M. Harmeling, Martin Mende, Maura L. Scott, and Robert W. Palmatier. The copyright of the published article resides with the American Marketing Association (AMA) / SAGE Publications.

For non-commercial, scholarly, educational, and empirical academic research purposes, psychometric scales published within peer-reviewed scientific literature are generally accessible under fair academic use principles, provided the original authors and the source publication are appropriately cited. Commercial applications, consulting deployments, or inclusion in commercial software packages require formal permissions or licensing through the copyright clearance mechanisms of the publisher (SAGE / AMA) or the original authors.

References

• Aggarwal, P. (2004). The effects of brand relationship norms on consumer attitudes and behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(1), 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1086/383426
• Clark, M. S., & Mills, J. (1979). Interpersonal attraction in exchange and communal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(1), 12–24. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.1.12
• Clark, M. S., & Mills, J. (1993). The difference between communal and exchange relationships: What it is and is not. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19(6), 684–691. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167293196003
• Crocker, J., Major, B., & Steele, C. (1998). Social stigma. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology (4th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 504–553). McGraw-Hill.
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.6.878
• Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Prentice-Hall.
• Harmeling, C. M., Mende, M., Scott, M. L., & Palmatier, R. W. (2021). Marketing through the eyes of the stigmatized. Journal of Marketing Research, 58(2), 223–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243720988817
• Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• 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.

Items of the Scale