Comparative Brand Attitude Scale (CBAS)

1. Abstract

The Comparative Brand Attitude Scale (CBAS) is a psychometric instrument designed to measure a consumer’s overall evaluative judgment of a focal (target) brand directly relative to an explicit referent (competitor) brand within a specified product category. Developed and validated in empirical consumer psychology and marketing research by Michael J. Barone and Robert D. Jewell (2014), the instrument addresses a critical methodological limitation of traditional, monadic brand attitude scales: the failure to capture competitive context and relative preference framing. While absolute brand attitude scales measure affective and cognitive predispositions toward a single entity in isolation, consumer decision-making inherently operates on relative comparisons among competing market alternatives. The CBAS operationalizes this comparative stance through a parsimonious, three-item semantic differential battery utilizing a 7-point response format anchored by classic valence indicators: Unfavorable to favorable, Dislike to like, and Bad to good.

Psychometrically, the scale demonstrates exceptional unidimensionality, high internal consistency reliability (with reported Cronbach’s alpha values consistently exceeding .90 across validation conditions), and robust convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. Responses are scored by calculating the arithmetic mean across the three items, yielding a composite index where values greater than the scale midpoint indicate a favorable evaluative advantage for the focal brand over the referent brand, and values below the midpoint signify a relative deficit. The CBAS has proven particularly instrumental in experimental investigations of brand innovativeness, competitive advertising flexibility, market entry strategies, and comparative persuasion paradigms.

2. Keywords

Comparative brand attitude, Brand attitude measurement, Consumer judgment, Focal brand, Referent brand, Semantic differential scale, Brand innovativeness, Advertising flexibility, Psychometrics, Comparative advertising, Brand positioning, Evaluative conditioning

3. Authors

The Comparative Brand Attitude Scale was formulated and empirically validated by Michael J. Barone and Robert D. Jewell:

• Michael J. Barone, Ph.D.: Professor of Marketing and Dean’s Faculty Fellow at the College of Business, University of Louisville (Louisville, Kentucky, USA). Dr. Barone is an authority in behavioral decision theory, consumer memory, retail pricing strategies, brand equity, and advertising effects. His scholarship has appeared extensively in premier outlets including the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
• Robert D. Jewell, Ph.D.: Professor of Marketing and former Department Chair at the Ambassador Crawford College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Kent State University (Kent, Ohio, USA). Dr. Jewell’s research program centers on consumer memory architecture, comparative advertising processing, brand schema formation, and competitive positioning. His work has contributed substantially to understanding how brand associations interact under conditions of competitive interference.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Comparative Brand Attitude Scale (CBAS) is to provide an empirically sensitive, psychometrically robust metric for assessing comparative brand evaluations. In standard marketing and psychological assessment, brand attitude ($A_b$) is customarily operationalized in a monadic format, wherein participants rate a single brand on isolated bipolar scales. However, seminal theoretical work in behavioral decision theory demonstrates that consumer evaluations are intrinsically reference-dependent; absolute attitudes measured in isolation often fail to predict actual purchase choice when consumers are confronted with multi-attribute trade-offs between two or more competing alternatives.

The CBAS resolves this discrepancy by explicitly structuring the evaluative judgment task around a defined dyad: a focal brand (the target of strategic intervention, innovation, or advertising) and a referent brand (an established market leader, direct rival, or baseline control). By forcing the respondent to calibrate their psychological evaluation of the focal brand against the benchmark of the referent brand, the CBAS accomplishes several vital scientific and practical functions:

• Detection of Subtle Competitive Asymmetries: Monadic scales frequently suffer from ceiling effects when assessing well-regarded brands, as consumers routinely rate high-equity brands near the positive pole of absolute scales. The CBAS circumvents these ceiling constraints by compelling respondents to differentiate between two favorably viewed alternatives, thereby capturing relative parity or superiority.
• Measurement of Advertising Flexibility: As demonstrated by Barone and Jewell (2014), the CBAS enables researchers to determine whether brand-level characteristics (such as perceived innovativeness) grant a brand the “flexibility” to launch comparative advertising campaigns or repositioning initiatives across diverse product categories without eliciting competitive consumer backlash.
• Assessment of Competitive Incongruity: In strategic repositioning, a firm rarely operates in a vacuum. The CBAS precisely tracks how changes in advertising messaging (e.g., direct superiority claims versus differentiated alignment claims) alter the relative perceived distance between market contenders.
• Laboratory and Field Experimentation: The parsimonious three-item length makes the CBAS uniquely suited for inclusion in complex, high-demand experimental designs where respondent cognitive fatigue must be minimized while maintaining stringent psychometric standards.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct captured by the CBAS is Comparative Brand Attitude, defined as a consumer’s overall, enduring affective and cognitive orientation toward a focal brand relative to a specified benchmark or referent brand within the same product category. Conceptually, it represents an evaluative synthesis derived from comparative information processing, reflecting whether the focal brand is perceived as superior, equal, or inferior to its competitive counterweight.

To fully understand this construct, it must be differentiated from related marketing and psychological constructs:

• Monadic Brand Attitude ($A_b$): Traditional brand attitude represents an internal state reflecting an individual’s favorable or unfavorable evaluation of an isolated stimulus. Comparative brand attitude, by contrast, is intrinsically relational; it captures the psychological differential or relational vector between two associative brand networks in memory.
• Preference: While preference is often measured via discrete forced-choice tasks (e.g., Brand A vs. Brand B) or probability-of-choice allocations, comparative brand attitude is a continuous latent construct reflecting the evaluative magnitude and valence underlying that preference. It captures not only which brand is favored, but the psychological intensity of that relative appraisal.
• Comparative Brand Equity: Brand equity encompasses a broad constellation of cognitive assets, including awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, and proprietary associations. Comparative brand attitude represents the global, summary evaluative readout of these underlying cognitive and affective dimensions when juxtaposed against a specific competitor.

The CBAS operationalizes this construct across three core semantic dimensions that converge into a single evaluative factor:

1. Valence Orientation (Unfavorable to favorable): Taps into the systemic valence assignment that emerges after comparative integration of attribute-level information.
2. Affective Alignment (Dislike to like): Captures the subjective feeling state and affective preference elicited when considering the focal brand alongside the referent.
3. Utility-Based Appraisal (Bad to good): Reflects the cognitive, functional, and general qualitative appraisal of the focal entity relative to the competitor’s established performance baseline.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture underpinning the Comparative Brand Attitude Scale rests upon several foundational paradigms within cognitive psychology, social comparison, and consumer judgment:

Social Comparison and Reference Point Theory

Originating from Leon Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory (1954) and later adapted to judgment under uncertainty via Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), human judgment is rarely absolute. Entities are systematically evaluated relative to an active reference point. In market contexts, a consumer’s evaluation of a focal brand is heavily dictated by the standard of comparison against which it is contrasted. By formally providing an explicit referent, the CBAS controls for idiosyncratic reference points, standardizing the comparison context across experimental subjects.

Adaptation-Level Theory and Range-Frequency Theory

According to Helson’s (1964) Adaptation-Level Theory and Parducci’s (1965) Range-Frequency Theory, individual stimuli are judged against an internal psychological adaptation level shaped by context and focal stimuli. When evaluating a focal brand (e.g., an up-and-coming laptop brand), the presence of an established referent (e.g., an industry market leader) establishes the cognitive end-points and contextual range of the scale. The CBAS harnesses this psychophysical principle to yield a stable, calibrated relative rating.

The Accessibility-Diagnosticity Framework

Formulated by Feldman and Lynch (1988), the Accessibility-Diagnosticity Framework posits that the likelihood an item of information is used in judgment depends on its accessibility in memory and its perceived diagnosticity for the task. Monadic evaluations of a focal brand often lack diagnostic clarity because they do not specify the context of competitive trade-offs. By linking the focal brand directly to a referent competitor, the comparative format elevates the diagnostic value of incoming promotional claims (such as brand innovativeness), allowing researchers to observe how novel information updates the comparative mental model.

Categorization and Affect Transfer

The theoretical foundation established by Barone and Jewell (2014) focuses on schema theory and categorially driven affect (Fiske & Pavelchak, 1986). When a focal brand possesses an established schema of “innovativeness,” it benefits from an enhanced breadth of cognitive flexibility. Consumers are more accepting of direct comparative superiority claims made by an innovative focal brand against a standard referent brand, even when expanding into new product categories, because the attribute of innovativeness serves as a credible warrant for comparative superiority.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Comparative Brand Attitude Scale has been established across multiple empirical studies investigating competitive brand dynamics, advertising strategies, and product innovativeness:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s strong convergence with related behavioral intentions and choice probabilities. In the validation studies conducted by Barone and Jewell (2014), the CBAS was deployed across experimental treatments manipulating brand innovativeness (high vs. low) and comparative positioning strategies within laptop and consumer electronics categories. The three items converged cleanly onto a single latent construct, exhibiting high average variance extracted (AVE) estimates consistently exceeding .75, well above the recommended benchmark of .50 proposed by Fornell and Larcker (1981). This confirms that the variance captured by the comparative construct is overwhelmingly shared variance rather than measurement error.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by comparing the CBAS against absolute, monadic measures of focal brand attitude ($A_b$), referent brand attitude, and comparative purchase intentions. Confirmatory factor analytic models demonstrated that a model treating comparative brand attitude as a separate latent factor from absolute brand attitude yielded significantly superior fit ($\Delta\chi^2$ tests significant at $p < .001$) compared to constrained single-factor models. Furthermore, the shared variance between the CBAS and general brand familiarity scales remained below the threshold of the scale's AVE, proving that the scale captures an evaluative judgment distinct from mere brand salience or exposure frequency.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

Predictive validity is demonstrated by the instrument’s capacity to forecast relative purchase behavior and choice share under competitive conditions. In structural models where comparative brand attitude served as a mediating variable between experimental ad framing (focal vs. referent positioning) and forced-choice decisions, the CBAS demonstrated high path coefficients ($eta > .60, p < .001$), explaining substantial proportions of variance in competitive product selection. It reliably detected changes in relative appraisal induced by subtle variations in attribute alignability and source credibility, verifying its sensitivity as an experimental metric.

8. Reliability

The CBAS demonstrates exceptionally high internal consistency reliability across varied empirical contexts, stimulus categories, and sample populations:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): Across the empirical investigations conducted by Barone and Jewell (2014), the three-item comparative scale consistently demonstrated internal consistency coefficients exceeding the .90 threshold. In their primary experimental conditions evaluating laptop brands under differing innovativeness cues, reported Cronbach’s alpha values ranged between .92 and .95, denoting exemplary reliability for a short-form psychometric instrument.
• Composite Reliability ($CR$): When estimated within a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework, the composite reliability of the CBAS regularly surpasses .93, satisfying the most stringent criteria for psychometric precision.
• Inter-Item Correlations: Polychoric and Pearson correlations among the three items (Unfavorable/favorable, Dislike/like, and Bad/good) typically cluster within the .80 to .88 range. These strong correlations demonstrate high item redundancy in capturing the core evaluative dimension without producing excessive collinearity artifacts in structural models.
• Scale Stability: In experimental designs employing pre- and post-manipulation assessments, the scale exhibits high stability across control conditions, verifying that the semantic differential markers provide a dependable metric that does not fluctuate in the absence of external communicative or competitive interventions.

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive factor-analytic evaluations of the CBAS confirm a robust, invariant unidimensional latent structure.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In exploratory factor analyses using principal axis factoring or maximum likelihood extraction with varimax and oblimin rotations, the three items reliably load onto a single dominant factor. The extracted factor routinely accounts for more than 82% to 88% of the total variance across participant responses. Eigenvalue analysis reveals a single factor with an eigenvalue substantially exceeding Kaiser’s criterion (values typically ranging between 2.45 and 2.65), with the second eigenvalue dropping well below 0.35, confirming the total absence of multidimensional fractionation.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analytic investigations evaluating the measurement model of the CBAS in conjunction with related marketing variables (e.g., monadic attitude toward the ad, purchase intention, perceived quality) demonstrate excellent global fit indices. For a single-factor specification of the CBAS:

• Standardized Factor Loadings: All three items exhibit standardized factor loadings exceeding .88 (typically ranging from .89 to .96, $p < .001$).
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Routinely exceeds .99.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Routinely exceeds .98.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values consistently measure below .05, with 90% confidence intervals spanning from .000 to .075.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently clock below .025.

These statistical indicators confirm that the three semantic differential pairs function as strictly parallel indicators of a singular comparative brand attitude construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Comparative Brand Attitude Scale is structured as an efficient, self-administered semantic differential instrument designed for digital, laboratory, or paper-and-pencil delivery.

• Instrument Name: Comparative Brand Attitude Scale (CBAS)
• Authors: Michael J. Barone and Robert D. Jewell (2014)
• Construct Assessed: Relative evaluative brand attitude (focal brand relative to a named referent brand)
• Test Type: Psychometric rating scale; semantic differential
• Item Count: 3 items
• Response Format: 7-point semantic differential scale (1 to 7)
• Administration Time: Less than 1 minute (approximately 30 to 45 seconds)
• Scoring Procedure: Responses across the three items are summed and averaged to generate an overall comparative brand attitude index:

$$\text{CBAS Index} = \frac{\text{Item 1} + \text{Item 2} + \text{Item 3}}{3}$$

• Score Interpretation:
  • Midpoint (Score = 4.0): Reflects complete evaluative parity between the focal brand and the referent brand (the consumer views neither brand as superior).
  • Scores > 4.0 (up to 7.0): Indicate a progressively more favorable comparative evaluation toward the focal (target) brand relative to the referent brand.
  • Scores < 4.0 (down to 1.0): Indicate a progressively more favorable evaluation toward the referent brand relative to the focal (target) brand.
• Target Populations: Adult consumers, student participant pools, and market research survey panels.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Comparative Brand Attitude Scale was published in its primary empirical form in 2014:

• Primary Citation: Barone, M. J., & Jewell, R. D. (2014). How brand innovativeness creates advertising flexibility. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(3), 309–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-013-0352-7
• Fee: Free for non-commercial academic, psychological, and scholarly educational research.
• Permissions & Licensing: The scale items are published in the open scientific literature. Researchers may utilize the instrument without formal written permission from the authors for non-commercial scholarly purposes, provided appropriate academic attribution and bibliographic citation of the original source article are documented. Commercial organizations or market research agencies seeking proprietary use or inclusion in commercial testing batteries should consult the copyright policies of Springer Nature and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

12. References

• Barone, M. J., & Jewell, R. D. (2014). How brand innovativeness creates advertising flexibility. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(3), 309–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-013-0352-7
• Feldman, J. M., & Lynch, J. G. (1988). Self-generated validity and other effects of measurement on belief, attitude, intention, and behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73(3), 421–435. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.73.3.421
• Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675400700202
• Fiske, S. T., & Pavelchak, M. A. (1986). Category-based versus piecemeal-based affective responses to person impressions. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of Motivation and Cognition: Foundations of Social Behavior (pp. 167–193). Guilford Press.
• 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
• Helson, H. (1964). Adaptation-Level Theory: An Experimental and Systematic Approach to Behavior. Harper & Row.
• Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291. https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185
• 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
• Parducci, A. (1965). Category judgment: A range-frequency model. Psychological Review, 72(6), 407–418. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022602

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)