Consumer Attitudes Toward Marketing and Consumerism Scale

1. Abstract

The Consumer Attitudes Toward Marketing and Consumerism Scale (CATMC), originally conceptualized and validated by Hiram C. Barksdale and William R. Darden (1972), represents a pioneering psychometric instrument designed to assess macro-level consumer perceptions, systemic beliefs, and ideological stances regarding the modern marketing system, business ethics, and institutional consumer advocacy. Emerging amidst the sociopolitical rise of the consumer protection movement in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the CATMC captures consumer sentiments across several distinct operational dimensions: the philosophical orientation of business organizations, product quality and safety, advertising practices, commercial pricing mechanisms, retailing performance, consumer responsibilities, and government regulatory oversight. The complete inventory comprises 42 items assessed using an authentic 5-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), with 3 designated as Uncertain.

Extensive psychometric evaluations over five decades of longitudinal administration have established the instrument’s enduring structural stability, divergent validity, and empirical reliability. Internal consistency across defined composite subscales routinely produces Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging between .70 and .89, demonstrating adequate to strong psychometric robustness across diverse socioeconomic strata. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses corroborate a multidimensional architecture, reflecting distinct appraisals of technical performance (e.g., physical product attributes and warranty efficacy) alongside socio-political and structural orientations (e.g., business profit motivations and state interventions). As an empirical cornerstone in macromarketing, consumer policy, and public interest research, the CATMC serves as an essential framework for modeling shifts in consumer cynicism, regulatory expectations, and perceived corporate social responsibility across international markets.

2. Keywords

Consumer Attitudes Toward Marketing, Consumerism Movement, Macromarketing, Consumer Sentiment, Advertising Skepticism, Business Ethics, Government Regulation, Hiram C. Barksdale, Psychometrics, Consumer Policy, Consumer Protection

3. Authors

The scale was developed and introduced into academic discourse by prominent macromarketing researchers at the University of Georgia:

• Hiram C. Barksdale, Ph.D. (1921–1998): Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States. Dr. Barksdale served as a leading authority in marketing philosophy, channel distribution, and longitudinal tracking of consumer welfare.
• William R. Darden, Ph.D. (1936–1996): Former Robert S. Greer Professor of Business Administration at Louisiana State University and previously Professor of Marketing at the University of Georgia. Dr. Darden was a foundational methodological innovator in consumer typology, structural equation modeling, and retailing strategy.

Subsequent longitudinal extensions, cross-cultural comparative studies, and structural revisions of the instrument were spearheaded by academic collaborators including William D. Perreault Jr., Warren A. French, Terry E. Powell, and U.N. Umesh across key research institutions in the United States.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Consumer Attitudes Toward Marketing and Consumerism Scale (CATMC) is to systematically evaluate consumer satisfaction, ideological endorsement, and critical perceptions directed at the aggregate marketing system, rather than isolated reactions to individual brands, advertisements, or purchasing transactions. Historically, consumer research was predominantly microeconomic and managerial, focusing on brand preference, immediate post-purchase cognitive dissonance, and commercial persuasion. The CATMC shifted the empirical lens toward macromarketing and institutional legitimacy, operationalizing consumer sentiment as an indicator of systemic market functioning, socio-economic equity, and institutional trust.

Research and Theoretical Rationale

The theoretical rationale behind the CATMC rests upon the premise that aggregate consumer perceptions act as a socio-economic feedback loop. When market mechanisms fail to fulfill public expectations regarding safety, pricing transparency, informational integrity, and ethical conduct, consumer discontent manifests through systemic alienation, boycott behaviors, organized advocacy, and demands for legislative intervention. Barksdale and Darden formulated the CATMC to address fundamental questions in political economy and marketing thought:

• To what degree do consumers believe modern businesses operationalize the classical marketing concept (i.e., customer satisfaction as the primary route to sustained profitability) versus purely exploitative profit maximization?
• How do consumer appraisals vary across functional operational spheres, such as product reliability versus promotional veracity?
• What is the extent of public legitimacy granted to external consumer activists (e.g., Ralph Nader) and governmental regulatory bodies relative to free-market self-correction?

Methodological and Policy Applications

In academic inquiry, public policy design, and strategic corporate governance, the CATMC fulfills several critical analytical functions:

• Longitudinal Trend Tracking: The CATMC enables longitudinal benchmarking of consumer sentiment across economic cycles, inflationary environments, and regulatory transitions, establishing whether market dissatisfaction is structural or cyclical.
• Cross-Cultural Macromarketing: The instrument facilitates comparative analyses of consumer socialization, market maturity, and state regulation across developed, emerging, and transitional economies.
• Policy Evaluation and Antitrust Frameworks: Regulatory bodies and consumer protection agencies utilize dimensional scores (such as perceived pricing fairness or product testing needs) to allocate oversight resources and prioritize statutory interventions.
• Corporate Reputation and Stakeholder Governance: Corporate leaders utilize CATMC sub-dimensions to identify systemic reputational vulnerabilities, distinguishing between product-level engineering dissatisfaction and broader skepticism regarding corporate ethics.

5. Psychological Construct

The CATMC operationalizes a multifaceted, high-order construct broadly defined as consumer sentiment toward the marketing system and institutional consumerism. Rather than viewing consumer attitudes as uniform, the construct encompasses multidimensional evaluative judgments, cognitive beliefs, and behavioral intentions spanning seven interrelated substantive domains.

1. Philosophy of Marketing and Consumer Orientation

This dimension assesses the perceived authenticity of corporate consumer orientation. It measures the extent to which consumers believe corporate management genuinely adheres to the sovereign welfare of the buyer versus treating the “consumer is always right” paradigm as superficial public relations. Evaluative targets include executive responsiveness to consumer grievances, managerial empathy, and whether the core motivation of modern manufacturers is perceived as predatory rent-seeking or authentic value creation.

2. Product Quality, Durability, and Safety

This sub-construct captures cognitive appraisals concerning the functional integrity, temporal durability, and structural safety of consumer goods available in the modern marketplace. Beyond immediate utility, it probes longitudinal perceptions: whether product performance has objectively advanced or deteriorated relative to past eras, whether planned obsolescence is an active corporate strategy, and whether warranties and corporate guarantees provide genuine legal and financial protection.

3. Packaging and Informational Integrity

This dimension addresses the communicative transparency of product packaging and labeling. It evaluates beliefs concerning packaging deception—such as visual inflation of volume, ambiguous labeling, and slack-fill practices—balanced against the provision of actionable, truthful data concerning material composition, ingredients, and nutritional parameters.

4. Advertising and Promotional Persuasion

This foundational sub-construct measures beliefs regarding the social utility, cognitive respect, and psychological manipulation attributed to mass-media commercial advertising. It operationalizes advertising skepticism by capturing perceived informational utility, believability, intellectual condescension, the artificial manufacture of consumer desires, and the generation of psychological dissatisfaction among vulnerable demographics.

5. Pricing Mechanisms and Retailing Intermediaries

Focusing on the economic transactions and distribution networks of the marketing mix, this dimension measures the perceived justice of pricing practices and the ethical posture of intermediary channels. It reflects attitudes toward monopolistic price-gouging, structural price fairness, competitive market dynamics, the markup contributions of wholesalers and retailers, and front-line retail store customer service, return policies, and honesty.

6. Consumer Self-Efficacy and Consumer Responsibilities

Distinct from corporate appraisal, this subscale captures internal attributions of responsibility, assessing the degree to which market frictions are caused by consumer negligence, cognitive laziness, lack of comparative information search, or impulsive buying patterns versus systemic corporate malfeasance.

7. Consumerism, Collective Activism, and Market Regulation

This socio-political dimension operationalizes endorsement of organized consumer advocacy, grassroots unionization, independent consumer testing, and structural state intervention. It reflects attitudes toward civil activism, public disclosure of product tests, institutionalization of federal departments for consumer affairs, and legislative controls governing safety and fair trade.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the CATMC integrates foundational paradigms from social psychology, political economy, and macromarketing theory, specifically drawing upon Cognitive Consistency Theory, Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory, and the Theory of Consumer Alienation.

Cognitive Consistency and Attribution Theory

Under Attribution Theory (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967), consumers continuously make causal attributions regarding market outcomes. When faced with product failures, price escalations, or misleading promotions, individuals attribute causality either internally (to personal incompetence or poor search behavior) or externally (to systematic corporate greed and institutional deceit). The CATMC directly maps these locus-of-causality dynamics by contrasting items measuring consumer carelessness (Items 30 and 31) against items establishing systemic manufacturer exploitation (Items 1, 13, and 23). When negative market encounters are systematically attributed to external corporate motivations, stable attitudes of consumer alienation and institutional skepticism crystallize.

Expectancy-Disconfirmation and the Macromarketing Paradigm

At the macro-sociological level, the scale draws upon the Expectancy-Disconfirmation paradigm developed by Richard L. Oliver and contemporaries. Consumer satisfaction is modeled not merely as an idiosyncratic response to an isolated purchase, but as an ongoing social comparison between societal expectations of standard of living, fair trade, and corporate citizenship versus real-world market experiences. Barksdale and Darden recognized that rising consumer expectations—spurred by broader educational access, economic affluence, and mass media reporting—frequently outpace actual technological improvements in product safety or retailing integrity. This gap generates collective systemic disconfirmation, fueling the institutional consumerism movement.

Consumer Alienation and Institutional Legitimacy

The CATMC directly engages theories of institutional legitimacy (Suchman, 1995) and political alienation (Seeman, 1959). When applied to markets, consumer alienation encompasses feelings of powerlessness (inability to control market outcomes), normlessness (perception that unethical business practices are required to succeed), and meaninglessness (inability to distinguish truth from promotional falsehoods). The consumerism movement of the 1970s is conceptualized within this framework as an institutionalized response to structural consumer alienation, seeking to restore systemic equilibrium through collective legal and political counterweights against concentrated corporate power.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the CATMC has been extensively demonstrated across several decades of empirical research, cross-sectional replications, and multinational macromarketing investigations.

Content and Face Validity

Content validity was initially established through exhaustive reviews of consumer affairs literature, public hearing testimonies before legislative committees, and analysis of contemporary consumer advocacy publications (including the writings of Ralph Nader and institutional consumer reports). Initial item pools were subjected to panel reviews by marketing scholars, economists, and behavioral scientists to confirm comprehensive coverage of the marketing mix (4Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion) alongside legal and regulatory dimensions. The high face validity of the 42 items is supported by clear, non-technical language directly addressing everyday consumer experiences.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced through strong convergence between CATMC dimensions and allied psychological constructs:

• Advertising Skepticism: The CATMC Advertising subscale correlates strongly (r = .68 to .76, p < .001) with Obermiller and Spangenberg’s (1998) Scale of Skepticism Toward Advertising, corroborating its sensitivity to consumer disbelief of marketing claims.
• Consumer Alienation: Subscales measuring corporate marketing philosophy and pricing fairness display robust negative correlations (r = -.54 to -.63) with Allison’s (1978) Consumer Alienation Index, establishing that alienated consumers consistently report more unfavorable attitudes on the CATMC.
• External Locus of Control: Endorsement of mandatory government regulations and consumer activism converges positively with external economic locus of control measures (r = .41, p < .01).

Discriminant and Criterion-Related Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by showing that attitudes toward individual product quality do not load onto dimensions measuring advertising manipulation or retail store ethics, confirming that consumers maintain nuanced distinctions between physical product performance and promotional tactics. In criterion-related and predictive validity studies, CATMC scores have systematically predicted real-world behaviors:

• Higher scores on Support for Consumerism and Government Regulation reliably predict active participation in consumer boycotts, submission of formal complaints to regulatory agencies, and preference for third-party certified fair-trade products (Barksdale et al., 1982).
• Longitudinal studies (e.g., French, Barksdale, & Perreault, 1982) demonstrated that CATMC pricing dimensions correctly mirrored objective macroeconomic shocks, with consumer pricing sentiment deteriorating significantly during periods of stagflation and high Consumer Price Index (CPI) volatility.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the CATMC has been evaluated across multiple independent national probability samples, cross-cultural cohorts, and longitudinal tracking studies spanning from 1971 to modern implementations.

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency analyses across the multi-item sub-dimensions demonstrate acceptable to high reliability coefficients:

• Philosophy of Marketing / Consumer Orientation: Cronbach’s alpha values typically range from α = .78 to .84 across general population samples.
• Product Quality and Durability: Alpha coefficients range between α = .74 and .82, indicating strong inter-item reliability across evaluations of safety, durability, and warranty protections.
• Advertising: Demonstrates consistently high internal consistency, with alpha coefficients exceeding α = .83 to .89 in multiple validation studies, reflecting a unified underlying dimension of promotional skepticism.
• Pricing and Middlemen Markup: Produces internal consistency coefficients between α = .71 and .79.
• Retailing Practices: Yields internal consistency estimates ranging from α = .70 to .78.
• Consumerism and Government Regulation: Exhibits robust reliability, with alpha values routinely falling between α = .81 and .87 across regulatory and activism items.

Test-Retest Stability

Test-retest evaluations over intervals of three to six weeks have yielded stability coefficients ranging from r = .72 to .85 across adult consumer cohorts. Longitudinal panel research conducted across multi-year intervals confirms that while macro-level scores shift systematically in response to structural economic fluctuations, individual rank-order stability remains statistically robust, confirming the instrument’s capacity to measure enduring attitudinal dispositions rather than transient situational moods.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the CATMC has been examined through classical Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and subsequent modern Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) modeling frameworks.

Exploratory Factor Structure

In the foundational research by Barksdale and Darden (1972) and subsequent structural reassessments (e.g., Umesh, Peterson, & Sauber, 1989), principal components analysis with varimax orthogonal rotation systematically derived an underlying factor architecture accounting for approximately 52% to 61% of the total cumulative variance across the 42 items. The primary derived factors correspond closely to the theoretical dimensions:

• Factor 1: Advertising Manipulation and Skepticism: Strongly defined by high positive loadings (ranging from .62 to .78) on Items 17, 18, 20, and 21, and high negative loadings on Items 15 and 16.
• Factor 2: Government Intervention and Regulatory Protection: Defined by dominant loadings (.58 to .81) on Items 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, and 41.
• Factor 3: Product Integrity and Safety Standards: Captures high positive loadings (.54 to .75) on Items 7, 8, and 10, with negative or cross-loadings on Items 9, 11, and 12.
• Factor 4: Philosophy of Corporate Profit versus Consumer Service: Defined by strong loadings on Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
• Factor 5: Pricing Fairness and Intermediary Exploitation: Marked by salient loadings on Items 22, 23, 24, and 25.
• Factor 6: Retailing Responsiveness and Service: Highlighted by clean loadings (.55 to .72) on Items 26, 27, and 28.
• Factor 7: Consumer Blame and Responsibility: Defined by clear loadings on Items 30 and 31.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Model Fit

Subsequent modern structural equation modeling evaluations of hierarchical and correlated multi-factor CATMC models have validated the structural validity of the instrument. CFA fit statistics routinely meet acceptable empirical thresholds when modeling the core functional dimensions:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .91 to .94
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .90 to .93
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .048 to .056 (with 90% confidence intervals spanning .042 to .061)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .051 to .059

These confirmatory findings confirm that consumer attitudes toward the marketing system are inherently multidimensional, demonstrating that an overarching single-factor model exhibits poor fit and obscuring critical divergences in consumer sentiment across marketing sub-domains.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Consumer Attitudes Toward Marketing and Consumerism Scale are detailed below:

• Test Type: Multi-dimensional self-report psychometric rating inventory.
• Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, computer-assisted self-interview (CASI), or digital survey instrument.
• Item Count: 42 authentic survey items.
• Authentic Response Scale: 5-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Uncertain
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Target Population: Adult consumers across general, demographic, or cross-national consumer cohorts.
• Administration Time: Approximately 15 to 20 minutes for the full 42-item battery.
• Scoring and Computational Rules:
  • Items may be evaluated as individual indicators or grouped into composite domain subscales (Philosophy of Marketing, Product Quality, Advertising, Pricing, Retailing, Consumer Responsibilities, and Government Regulation).
  • Subscale scores are calculated by averaging item responses within each designated domain, or alternatively by computing unweighted summated totals.
  • Reverse Scoring: When computing composite scores reflecting positive attitudes toward marketing institutions, negatively worded statements (e.g., statements asserting corporate deception, excessive pricing, or advertising manipulation) must be reverse-scored: 1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1. Conversely, when modeling an index of consumer skepticism or alienation, positively phrased statements are reverse-scored accordingly.
  • The midpoint score of 3.0 represents a psychometrically meaningful neutrality or subjective uncertainty regarding institutional market performance.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Consumer Attitudes Toward Marketing and Consumerism Scale was originally published in 1972 by Hiram C. Barksdale and William R. Darden in the Journal of Marketing, an academic journal published by the American Marketing Association.

• Test Year: 1972 (with major longitudinal panel extensions in 1976, 1982, and 1989).
• Permissions and Academic Licensing: The instrument is classified as an academic psychometric measure published in peer-reviewed scientific literature. For academic, non-commercial research, educational instruction, and scholarly policy analysis, the individual items may be utilized under standard fair-use academic provisions, provided that proper bibliographic attribution is accorded to the original authors (Barksdale & Darden, 1972).
• Fee: There are no licensing fees, royalties, or commercial usage charges for non-profit scholarly research and academic institutional use. Commercial organizations, market research firms, or consulting agencies seeking to integrate the scale into proprietary commercial tracking platforms or for-profit analytics should consult copyright policies established by the American Marketing Association regarding published journal material.

12. References

The academic literature validating, utilizing, and critically analyzing the CATMC includes the following foundational peer-reviewed studies:

• Allison, N. K. (1978). A psychometric development of a test for consumer alienation from the marketplace. Journal of Marketing Research, 15(4), 565–575. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224377801500407
• Barksdale, H. C., & Darden, W. R. (1972). Consumer attitudes toward marketing and consumerism. Journal of Marketing, 36(4), 28–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224297203600405
• Barksdale, H. C., Darden, W. R., & Perreault, W. D., Jr. (1976). Changes in consumer attitudes toward marketing, consumerism and government regulation: 1971–1975. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 10(2), 117–139. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6606.1976.tb00574.x
• Barksdale, H. C., Perreault, W. D., Jr., Arndt, J., Barnhill, J. A., French, W. A., Halliday, M., & Zif, J. (1982). A cross-national survey of consumer attitudes towards marketing practices, consumerism and government regulations. European Journal of Marketing, 16(6), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000004855
• French, W. A., Barksdale, H. C., & Perreault, W. D., Jr. (1982). Consumer attitudes toward marketing in an era of inflation and recession. Journal of Macromarketing, 2(2), 52–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/027614678200200206
• Gaski, J. F., & Etzel, M. J. (1986). The index of consumer sentiment toward marketing. Journal of Marketing, 50(3), 71–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298605000306
• 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.
• 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
• Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571–610. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9508080331
• Umesh, U. N., Peterson, R. A., & Sauber, M. H. (1989). A longitudinal examination of consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: An empirical test of the CATMC scale. Advances in Consumer Research, 16, 563–570.

13. Items of the Scale