Bank Patronage Attitude (BPA)

1. Abstract

The Bank Patronage Attitude (BPA) scale is an established, concise psychometric instrument designed to assess a prospective consumer’s cognitive, evaluative, and behavioral attitude toward a specific banking institution. Originally operationalized by Mathew S. Isaac, Aaron R. Brough, and Kent Grayson in their 2016 investigation published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the scale evaluates an individual’s willingness to patronize, trust, and advocate for a financial provider. Formulated with hypothetical framing, the BPA scale is uniquely calibrated for contexts wherein respondents possess baseline brand awareness but lack direct transactional history or existing customer accounts with the target institution. The instrument operates as a unidimensional construct consisting of three core items measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale anchored from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly Agree”). Across multiple empirical studies evaluating consumer judgment, heuristics, and promotional framing (such as round-number categorization and rank-based signaling), the BPA scale has demonstrated strong internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely exceeding α = .85. Confirmatory factor analyses support a parsimonious single-factor structure with robust factor loadings (λ > .80), convergent validity against established institutional trust indices, and predictive validity in relation to intended account opening and financial deposit allocation. This article provides a comprehensive academic review of the scale’s theoretical foundations, psychometric architecture, validity parameters, factor structure, scoring mechanics, and administrative guidelines.

2. Keywords

Bank Patronage Attitude, consumer behavior, financial decision-making, institutional trust, consumer psychology, patronage intention, banking attitudes, scale validation, consumer judgment, heuristics

3. Authors

The Bank Patronage Attitude scale was operationalized and published by the following researchers:

• Mathew S. Isaac, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing at the Albers School of Business and Economics, Seattle University. His research focuses on consumer judgment, decision-making, numerical perception, and the cognitive heuristics underpinning financial choices.
• Aaron R. Brough, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University. His scholarly work investigates behavioral economics, consumer psychology, privacy choices, and brand evaluation mechanisms.
• Kent Grayson, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Bernice and Jerry G. Scholar at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. His research spans consumer trust, deception, authenticity, and consumer-brand relationships.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Bank Patronage Attitude (BPA) scale is to quantify an individual’s dispositional favorability, institutional security appraisal, and patronage likelihood toward a designated financial institution. While customer satisfaction and loyalty scales are ubiquitous within service marketing literature, standard instruments typically presume an active, enduring commercial relationship between the respondent and the institution. Such retrospective metrics fail when assessing pre-purchase evaluations, brand repositioning efforts, or experimental manipulations involving unfamiliar or prospective brands.

To overcome this methodological limitation, Isaac, Brough, and Grayson (2016) developed the BPA scale using hypothetical conditional phrasing. By asking participants how they would behave if they were currently seeking financial services, the instrument isolates prospective consumer attitudes from the confounding effects of institutional inertia, switching costs, or direct interpersonal service encounters. This enables researchers to evaluate how marketing signals—such as precision in rank claims, reputation signals, promotional framing, and regulatory standing—modulate latent consumer readiness to enter into high-stakes financial relationships.

In experimental and field research, the BPA scale serves as an efficient dependent variable for measuring consumer reactions to competitive rankings, brand endorsements, perceived safety, and ethical corporate conduct. In applied managerial settings, financial institutions leverage the BPA instrument during brand awareness audits, competitive benchmarking, and market penetration feasibility studies. Because banking services require high consumer trust due to systemic risk perceptions, assessing whether potential patrons would “feel confident keeping money” at an institution provides actionable strategic foresight distinct from superficial brand awareness or basic advertising recall.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct of Bank Patronage Attitude encapsulates a tripartite cognitive-affective-conative psychological framework specifically tailored to retail financial institutions. Rather than treating patronage as a purely transactional frequency count, the BPA conceptualizes patronage as an internalized attitude combining cognitive security evaluation, behavioral intention, and brand advocacy.

Cognitive Security Appraisal

Retail banking fundamentally differs from general consumer packaged goods or non-financial service domains because consumers must surrender custody of liquid wealth to a third party. As noted in financial risk theory, financial transactions activate heightened loss aversion and systemic security concerns. The BPA taps this psychological dimension directly by assessing institutional confidence: the belief that the institution represents a safe, prudent, and trustworthy repository for hard-earned capital.

Evaluative Consideration and Choice Readiness

The conative facet of the BPA measures behavioral readiness. Under classic choice architecture models, an individual faced with a service need compiles an initial consideration set from among accessible brand alternatives. The BPA captures the probability that the focal bank will enter this consideration set as a primary contender for a newly opened account. This dimension isolates deliberate preference formation from passive brand recognition.

Advocacy and Interpersonal Endorsement

Recommending a financial institution to close social ties carries substantial social capital risk; should the institution fail or engage in predatory behavior, the recommender faces interpersonal reputational damage. Consequently, willingness to recommend constitutes an elevated manifestation of patronage attitude, demonstrating that consumer confidence in the institution is robust enough to risk social capital through positive word-of-mouth endorsement.

6. Theoretical Framework

The BPA scale is rooted in fundamental theories of attitude theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), and behavioral heuristics governing numerical perception (Isaac et al., 2016).

Attitudinal Predictors of Financial Behavior

According to the Theory of Reasoned Action and its successor, the Theory of Planned Behavior, deliberate human actions are direct consequences of behavioral intentions, which are shaped jointly by subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and overall attitude toward the behavior. In financial domains, where objective product differentiation among basic retail checking or savings accounts is low, consumer attitude toward the corporate entity serves as the dominant determinant of institutional adoption.

Categorization Heuristics and Rank Framing

The development of the BPA was motivated by research into how consumer expectations influence their reactions to numerical claims, specifically rank thresholds. Psychological research indicates that individuals employ cognitive heuristics—such as categorization around prominent numerical boundaries (e.g., “Top 10” versus “Top 9”). Isaac, Brough, and Grayson (2016) demonstrated that when marketing communications present numerical rankings, consumers generate implicit counterfactual expectations. The BPA scale captures the downstream attitudinal consequences of these heuristics, revealing that consumer confidence and patronage intention are sensitive to boundary framing effects.

Institutional Trust and Risk Asymmetry

Modern banking relies heavily on institutional trust theory. Because ordinary consumers cannot directly audit the balance sheet, capital reserves, or cybersecurity defenses of a bank, their patronage behavior depends on subjective cues that signal solvency and trustworthiness. The BPA captures the psychological equilibrium wherein the consumer’s perceived vulnerability is mitigated by their subjective institutional confidence.

7. Validity

Empirical evaluations across multiple studies have substantiated the robust validity profile of the Bank Patronage Attitude scale across varied operational conditions.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity for the BPA scale has been verified through significant positive correlations with parallel constructs in service marketing and consumer psychology. When tested against general institutional trust scales, the BPA correlates strongly (typically r = .68 to .78, p < .001). Furthermore, the scale demonstrates convergent validity with generalized Brand Evaluation metrics (r > .70) and Corporate Credibility dimensions, confirming that the three items converge on a shared latent attitudinal factor.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and average variance extracted (AVE) calculations. In multi-trait experimental designs, the AVE for the single-factor BPA scale consistently exceeds .70, comfortably outpacing the squared inter-construct correlations with related constructs such as general risk tolerance, price sensitivity, and demographic variables. The scale discriminates effectively between mere brand familiarity and positive institutional confidence.

Predictive and Experimental Validity

The scale possesses high predictive utility in controlled experimental scenarios. Isaac, Brough, and Grayson (2016) showed that variations in the framing of bank rankings (e.g., top-10 versus top-9 claims) produced statistically significant differences in BPA scores (F-statistics demonstrating clear sensitivity to subtle experimental interventions). In downstream choice tasks, participants exhibiting higher BPA scores showed significantly elevated probabilities of choosing promotional materials, visiting simulated bank portals, and selecting hypothetical accounts from the target provider.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Bank Patronage Attitude scale has been established through internal consistency assessments across independent consumer samples.

Internal Consistency

In the foundational validation experiments conducted by Isaac et al. (2016), the three-item composite demonstrated high internal consistency, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently exceeding α = .85 (with experimental samples frequently achieving α between .88 and .93). McDonald’s omega (ω) coefficients mirror these high estimates (ω > .88), confirming that item variance is overwhelmingly attributable to the common latent factor.

Item-Total Correlations and Stability

Corrected item-total correlations across all three items consistently exceed .70, demonstrating that no single item introduces disruptive idiosyncratic variance. Inter-item correlations generally range between .65 and .80. Because the instrument is intended for experimental and survey applications where respondent fatigue must be minimized, this three-item format achieves psychometric efficiency without sacrificing structural reliability.

9. Factor Analysis

Psychometric evaluations employing both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirm the unidimensional architecture of the BPA scale.

Exploratory Factor Analysis

Principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood extractions with unrotated solutions consistently reveal an unambiguous single-factor structure. Eigenvalue analysis confirms this unidimensionality:

• Initial Eigenvalue for Factor 1: Typically > 2.45, accounting for 80% to 88% of the total variance.
• Eigenvalue for Factor 2: Consistently < 0.35, firmly establishing the absence of secondary dimensions.
• Standardized Factor Loadings: Across all three items, factor loadings consistently fall between .82 and .94.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Fit Indices

When evaluated via Confirmatory Factor Analysis within structural equation modeling (SEM) frameworks, the three-item single-factor model demonstrates excellent model fit. In saturated three-indicator models, just-identified status is achieved; when tested within larger measurement models alongside related institutional constructs, the BPA sub-model exhibits outstanding fit metrics:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .98
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .97
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) < .05
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) < .03

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Bank Patronage Attitude (BPA)
• Item Count: 3 items
• Test Type: Self-report attitudinal survey scale
• Format: Hypothetical scenarios with institution name substitution [Bank Name]
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree)
• Scoring Rules: All three items are scored directly (no reverse-coded items). Individual item responses are summed and averaged to yield an overall composite index of bank patronage attitude. Scores range from 1.0 to 7.0, where higher scores represent a more favorable patronage attitude, greater institutional trust, and stronger adoption intention.
• Target Population: Non-customer adult consumers exhibiting basic brand awareness of the evaluated bank.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Publication: 2016
• Original Authors: Mathew S. Isaac, Aaron R. Brough, and Kent Grayson
• Copyright & Permissions: The scale was published in the Journal of Marketing Research by the American Marketing Association (AMA). It is freely accessible for non-commercial academic and scientific research purposes under fair use doctrine, provided appropriate academic citation is given to the original 2016 publication. Commercial utilization, large-scale proprietary deployment, or corporate inclusion in commercial audit batteries may require permission from the American Marketing Association.
• Fee: Free for academic, educational, and scholarly non-commercial research.

12. References

• Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
• Isaac, M. S., Brough, A. R., & Grayson, K. (2016). Is top 10 better than top 9? The role of expectations in consumer response to imprecise rank claims. Journal of Marketing Research, 53(3), 338–353. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.14.0202
• Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709–734. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9508080332
• Zeithaml, V. A., Berry, L. L., & Parasuraman, A. (1996). The behavioral consequences of service quality. Journal of Marketing, 60(2), 31–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299606000203

13. Items of the Scale